As the desire to integrate public cloud into our organisations IT continues to grow, the need to ensure we maintain control and security of our key assets is a challenge but one that we need to overcome if we are going to use cloud as a fundamental part of our future IT infrastructure.
The importance of security and reducing our vulnerabilities is not, of course, unique to using public cloud, it’s a key part of any organisations IT and data strategy. However, the move to public cloud does introduce some different challenges with many of our services and data now sitting well outside the protective walls of our datacentre. This means that if our risks and vulnerabilities go unidentified and unmanaged it can open us up to the potential of major and wide-reaching security breaches.
This weeks Tech Interviews is the second in our series looking at what organisations need to consider as they make the move to public cloud. In this episode we focus on risk, how to assess it, gain visibility into our systems regardless of location and how to mitigate the risks that our modern infrastructure may come across.
To help discuss the topic of risk management in the cloud, I’m joined by Darron Gibbard. Darron is th
e Managing Director for EMEA North and Chief Technology Security Officer for Qualys with 25 years’ experience in the enterprise security, risk and compliance industry, he is well placed too discuss the challenges of public cloud.
In this episode we look at the vulnerabilities that a move to cloud can create as our data and services are no longer the preserve of the data centre. We discuss whether the cloud is as high a risk as we may be led to believe and why a lack of visibility to risk and threats is more of a problem than any inherent risk in a cloud platform.
Darron shares some insight into building a risk-based approach to using cloud and how to assess risk and why understanding the impact of a vulnerability is just, if not more useful that working out the likelihood of a cloud based “event”.
We wrap up with a discussion around Qaulys’s 5 principles of security and their approach to transparent orchestration ensuring that all this additional information we can gather can be used effectively.
The challenges presented around vulnerability and risk management when we move to public cloud shouldn’t be ignored, but it was refreshing to hear Darron presenting a balanced view and discussing that the cloud is no riskier than any enterprise environment when managed correctly.
Qualys are an interesting company with a great portfolio of tools, including a number that are free to use and can assist companies of all sizes to reduce their risk exposure both on-prem and in the cloud, to find out more about Qualys you can visit www.qualys.com.
You can also contact Darron by email dgibbard@qualys.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Thanks for listening.
For the first show in this series then check out – Optimising the public cloud – Andrew Hillier – Ep71
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