The research from The Smartest Path to Your Secure Cloud report discovered that increased responsiveness to customer needs (45%) and accelerated time to market (42%) were more commonly cited business outcomes of migrating systems to the cloud than financial savings.
The findings, based on a survey of more than 400 (427) IT professionals, company directors and managers, also uncovered a number of common pitfalls that businesses fall into when planning their cloud migration.
Most (72%) firms don’t augment their existing IT teams with outside cloud-specific expertise. Less than 50% conduct cloud readiness assessments before starting the migration process and only 40% intend to appoint a dedicated steering committee to manage cloud adoption.
Gregg Martin, vice president of solutions engineering at Coalfire, said: “Many organizations rush into digital transformation without aligning on strategic outcomes or taking the proper steps to plan. Using cloud as a strategic enabler of digital transformation and applying a roadmap for creating a secure cloud in the enterprise means avoiding blind spots and unnecessary missteps.”
Coalfire’s Cloud Advisory Board
The report also provides a planning guide for businesses looking to adopt cloud, based on research and insights from participating members of Coalfire’s Cloud Advisory Board (CAB) – a panel of cyber security and cloud computing experts – as well as results from actual cloud deployments and lessons learned by cybersecurity professionals during their own digital transformation journeys.
CAB’s key observations in the report are:
· The most prepared cybersecurity leaders initially integrate only a small number of applications to a security platform starting with low impact/low risk applications.
· Partnering security practitioners with cloud engineers helps ensure that any code and automation development or changes are supportive of security policy automations.
Mark Carney, executive vice president of cybersecurity services at Coalfire, said: “The unprecedented shift to the cloud has forced companies to make complex decisions about digital transformation in this new era. We developed this research with the hope of advancing the cybersecurity community by building strong cloud security leaders and ensuring best practices are instilled in the cloud.
