Valtix, a multi-cloud network security platform as a service, announced findings from its 2023 Multi-cloud Security Report, which found that 95 percent of companies are pushing toward a multi-cloud environment, but only 58 percent believe they have the security architecture to support it. Survey respondents included more than 200 U.S. IT leaders. They cited complexities, gaps and other challenges between the overall strategy and the infrastructure they ultimately create.
The survey found that multi-cloud activity continues to rise with 93 percent of respondents having workloads and data on more than one cloud. Of those not in a multi-cloud environment, a full 94 percent expect to be multi-cloud within 12 months. Companies are embracing multi-cloud twice as fast this year compared to Valtix’s year-ago survey. At that time, only 62 percent of organizations were multi-cloud, with 84 percent expecting to get there within two years.
“Multi-cloud continues as a strategic priority for most organizations in 2023 — yet it also remains a concern for nearly all organizations,” said Vishal Jain, co-founder and CEO of Valtix. “Very few companies have the tech, talent and confidence they need to put in place a comprehensive security infrastructure across multiple clouds. While many companies are still unintentional in their cloud choice, leaders are increasingly looking for proactive ways to leverage multi-cloud to benefit the business.”
According to the survey, organizations cited several ‘unintentional’ factors that have accelerated their journey to a multi-cloud environment, including shadow IT (51 percent), different ISVs that support different clouds (48 percent), and mergers and acquisitions (47 percent).
Even as adoption accelerates, 28 percent of IT leaders surveyed strongly believe multi-cloud is a “bad idea,” citing issues such as:
- Difficult to consistently secure (38 percent)
- Lack of multi-cloud security and management tools (35 percent)
- Lack of multi-cloud reference architectures (32 percent)
Only 57 percent of IT leaders are sure that multi-cloud security is achievable with current resources and technology, but they acknowledge they need to embrace it anyway, as 95 percent consider multi-cloud a “strategic priority” this year.
Other findings include:
- Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) fail to define portability standards – As businesses leverage CSPs for cloud transformation, IT leaders surveyed were not hopeful CSPs will define portability standards anytime soon. A full 97 percent of IT leaders believe that CSPs should help define standards to enable better multi-cloud portability. However, 58 percent surveyed believe security standardization in a multi-cloud environment is a ‘myth’ and never achievable. Nearly all (90 percent) of organizations surveyed evaluate third-party security technology in addition to the security tools CSPs provide.
- Multi-cloud is a budgetary drain – Managing multiple distinct security architectures with multi-cloud security is prohibitively expensive for 86 percent of organizations.
- The rise of the cloud security architect – The Cloud Security Architect is growing as a common role with 86 percent of organizations employing an in-house cloud security architect. Moreover, 89 percent of organizations require every cloud project to adhere to a cloud security reference architecture.
- Cloud security posture management viewed as a commodity – 67 percent of IT leaders view CSPM technology provided by the cloud providers as being critical to their success. Only 53 percent of organizations are looking to make a new CSPM technology investment in 2023.
A complimentary copy of the full report can be downloaded at https://valtix.com/lp/2023-multi-cloud-security-report/.
