While the origin story of the term "cloud computing" is still not set in stone, many of us agree that "the cloud", as we currently think about it, "began" sometime in 2006. This was the year Amazon launched a number of web-based services including storage, with Google and others quickly following suit. Over the past 15 years, the cloud has moved from toddlerhood through awkward adolescence to a more mature place. In fact, new research indicates that 50% of business workloads are expected to run in the cloud by 2023, up from 40% in 2021.
Unfortunately, many of the issues that have plagued the cloud’s early childhood still continue to this day. Security, visibility, governance and skilled labor to manage all of the moving parts continue to be difficult, and after a decade plus in the cloud, an estimated 30% of spending on cloud infrastructure is wasted. Some of the trends we expect to see play out in 2022 include:
#1: Networks Will Continue to Grow in Complexity
Today IT environments typically encompass on-premises data centers, multi cloud environments, network-edge facilities, a large variety of end user devices, and a broad collection of different networks. To manage these diverse environments, organizations have deployed a growing variety of systems and tools, but these are creating additional layers of complexity as well as information silos. This complexity also extends to network security. 2021 is on track to be a record-breaking year for data breaches, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center. As breaches grow and attacks become more sophisticated, organizations continue to find themselves in defensive mode, chasing bad actors instead of being able to stay ahead of future cyber risk challenges. The network is a critical piece of infrastructure, and needs to be managed and secured as such.
#2: Tools That Can Provide a Single Source of Truth Regarding the Health of the Network Will Be in Even Higher Demand
Despite this overabundance of security tools and solutions, organizations still need simple, straightforward ways to provide new visibility into what is basically an old problem, that essentially you cannot secure what you can’t see.
According to research from IDG, organizations are looking for easy and immediate solutions that help them "see," with 88% wanting real-time network monitoring capabilities and 85% are seeking improvement in network-breach response times. 2022 will be the year that multiple IT teams embrace tools that offer a single source of truth that everybody can collaborate around. This will make it easy for teams to understand behavior in both enterprise and major public cloud environments. Currently, each cloud uses siloed, proprietary tools for visibility, but a single source of truth will make it both easier to verify and then act on behavior in all network environments.
#3: Enterprises Will Embrace a Multi-Cloud Strategy
Costs of cloud outages are material to a company’s bottom line, so it makes sense that more enterprises are adopting a multi-cloud strategy to ensure that if one cloud computing service goes down, business can go on. Having full visibility in both on-premise and multiple cloud environments will help businesses understand all potential exposures and act on them. Understanding all possible network paths, and visibility into how any changes will impact network behavior will help enterprises “keep the lights on,” ensuring that network performance is as expected and avoiding multi-cloud routing billing surprises in 2022.
#4: The Cloud Matures
Network and security operations teams will work together to fully visualize all possible data paths and network traffic behaviors to truly understand potential vulnerabilities. Then they can implement and enforce policies that eliminate risky pathways and segment the network effectively.
Part of growing up means learning how to effectively build relationships. In 2022, network and security teams that are currently siloed will start to shift toward a more proactive approach to network security challenges. The true security posture of an organization cannot be fully understood without understanding every piece of the infrastructure - the endpoints that run applications and services, the firewalls where policies are implemented and the network that interconnects them all. This year, organizations will start moving away from islands of knowledge and embracing the tools and techniques that reveal the full picture.
These teams will also push a shift in culture to ensure that network security is not a "one and done" solution. The network is constantly being changed by the people that manage it so consistent and frequent validation is necessary to ensure that policies are performing as intended. With visibility across the entire IT infrastructure, the shift to the continued move to the cloud can be done with confidence.
