Cloud Native Security in 2023

Compared to the 41 percent in 2022,  Cloud Native Security that is quite a rise. But I’m positive it will occur. Additionally, I am certain that the difficulties associated with cloud native security will only continue to worsen as the technology progresses.

Why? It’s not that the core of Kubernetes 1.26 contains some shocking security flaw. Alternatively, that Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda will suddenly begin causing bugs in your code. Imagine if it were that simple!

No, while technical issues—we’re looking at you, Log4j—can be very annoying, the real cloud native security issue is the one that actually exists between the keyboard and the seat. It could be known to your tech support staff as: There is a problem between the chair and the keyboard (PEBAK).

Don’t think so? According to a 2020 Ponemon and IBM study, 19% of data breaches are caused by misconfigured cloud servers alone. This is not difficult math. It’s the difficulty of properly configuring a cloud.

It’s not that I doubt your cloud team’s intelligence or familiarity with, say, Azure’s Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling (KEDA) system; Kyndryl’s Native Cloud Services; or the GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) If you’re actually working with cloud native services, that’s trivial.

Cloud Native Security Challange

No, the issue lies in the difficulty of understanding how to secure cloud native applications, let alone how to build and maintain them. IT and developers continue to work under tight deadlines right now. Security neglect results from this pressure to perform.

You could say, “That’s already known.” Moreover, to cease pestering you about it. I simply cannot. You may be aware that security is significant, but that does not imply that your team takes it seriously. Lip service is not sufficient.

Although you may be moving security left in your development pipeline, this does not necessarily mean that it is being completed. Software Security During Modern Code Review: According to a recent study from the University of Zurich: The Developer’s Perspective demonstrated that the majority of developers continue to disregard security concerns during code review. They will claim to be, but they do not. In the rush to distribute deliverables as quickly as possible, security is frequently overlooked.

The primary issue is that management continues to not take security seriously enough. As a result, this continues to occur. They all appear to refuse to take it seriously until a project or company has its nose slashed.

“Leaders will want to know [the security risk] so they can allocate resources accordingly to lower their overall risk exposure,” Oxeye Security, a cloud native security company, anticipates. I wish.
It’s true that Gartner projects a 26.8% growth rate for cloud native security in 2023. After all, the senior director analyst at Gartner, Ruggero Contu, made the observation that “the pandemic accelerated hybrid work and the shift to the cloud, challenging the [chief information security officers] CISO to secure an increasingly distributed enterprise.” Security services will therefore reach $76.5 billion in 2023.

CISOs are underfunded

I don’t know if more money will be spent where it’s needed. “The budgets of many, if not most, CISOs are underfunded,” according to a McKinsey cybersecurity study.
In addition, there is insufficient funding for IT security and the programmer, even when pure security funding is taken into account. This demonstrates that many businesses still do not provide security training in practice. Despite this, they believe that programmers will magically be able to incorporate security into their pipelines and programs.

Security is still viewed by the C-suite and IT teams as a magical black box in which processes and code can be stuffed and — ta-da! — They gain security. The opposite is undoubtedly the case.
Modern cloud development must incorporate security training as an integral component. I worry that we won’t notice that until after we have experienced even larger cloud disasters in 2023.

While we are all aware that cloud native security is complex, we are unaware of how difficult it is to secure cloud native applications. “Multicloud and other complicated, heterogeneous platform deployments have accelerated overly complex deployments,” as David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer at Deloitte Consulting, put it recently. Security budgets, methods, and tools have all remained unchanged. The risk of breach accelerates roughly at the same rate as complexity increases.

Before adding the most recent cloud native security tool to your workbench, Linthicum advises, “consider the impact of adding so many more moving parts to an IT environment that is already complex.” He’s correct. I barely comprehend the Cloud Native Interactive Landscape (CNCF) of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), but I make my living by staying on top of technology. Prior to making your infrastructure any more complicated than it already is, stick with what you know best and master it.

Advancements in security

In addition, Oxeye’s CTO and co-founder Ron Vider stated, “The protection of these platforms introduce new challenges, restrictions, and requirements that restrict traditional application security solutions from functioning effectively in these environments. Cloud native applications are game-changers when it comes to business agility.” The transition to cloud native application security necessitates a novel strategy that takes a comprehensive look at all software components as well as the underlying infrastructure in order to guarantee resilient operations.
It’s easier to say than do.

In 2023, some advancements in security do begin to materialize. Okta, a global leader in identity and access management (IAM), claims that 97% of businesses will implement a zero-trust policy by 2023 or 2024. Zscaler, a zero-trust business, claims that this will make cloud native security much simpler than relying on cloud-inappropriate security mechanisms like VPNs and firewalls. In addition to safeguarding end-user cloud access, zero trust will assist with API-secured and context-based access policies.

We will have to wait for additional technical advancements in cloud security. Spiceworks points out, for instance, how difficult it is to simply manage multiple cloud native security dashboards. How awful is it? Due to inconsistent application security across platforms, 69% of businesses experienced a breach or data exposure. That awful.

Complexity of cloud native

We now have more helpful automated security tools than ever before to combat this. For instance, as is now well known, software supply chain issues have developed into significant security concerns as a result of insecure third-party libraries. Thanks to software processes like Supply-Chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA, pronounced “salsa”), a shift-left security approach; Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) and Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX); We now have a more automated handle on our code security issues thanks to Interactive Application Security Testing (IAST) and Static Application Security Testing (SAST).

However, tools for each of these areas currently cover a variety of supply chain components. We are dealing with a great deal of complexity once more.
So, what are your options regarding this? First and foremost, the executive suite needs to prioritize security. They must also back this up by investing significantly more money not only in security with a capital “S,” but also in teaching everyone in the trenches how to protect their cloud. However, you must also invest in software supply chain security tools and zero trust.

This will not be easy in the slightest. I urge you to reduce the complexity of your cloud infrastructure as much as possible so that you can control it. If you do that, I hope you can get through the next year without major security issues or outages with a lot of hard work.