Manual processes for each individual infrastructure create a lack of consistent governance across infrastructures and leave greater surface for attack. Also, business continuity must be considered from the start, with a strategy that ensures dependable replication across the entire environment, and automatic failover should the need arise. It’s important to evaluate the skills, tools, and platforms available to ensure the right resources to get the job done right.
According to Frost & Sullivan research, approximately 85% of businesses around the globe will use a hybrid or multi-cloud environment by 2023 to meet their current and future IT needs. And as hybrid IT adoption grows, the associated security challenges will increase as well. Creating consistent backup, retention and failover policies for each individual infrastructure type is often a manual process, and it can be time-consuming to manage both the actual backups, and the restoration of applications and data as needed. While critical in the event of an outage, backup and recovery are too often overlooked by a stretched IT department. In a recent webinar hosted by Frost & Sullivan with experts from Red Hat and Capgemini, several customer concerns regarding hybrid cloud protection were noted, including:
- 63% of business leaders worldwide said implementing resiliency or backup plans for applications and data is a challenge.
- Among businesses that have repatriated an application from the public cloud to a premises-controlled infrastructure, almost half (48%) did so because they experienced a security incident in the cloud.
- Additionally, 37% repatriated cloud workloads because they could not adequately ensure compliance.
Using a three-pronged approach, businesses can help ensure the security of their applications and data.
- Choosing a platform that can automate all aspects of security will ensure that workloads and critical data are secure and accessible, regardless of what might happen in the data center or cloud. A platform that can automate security policies, provide secure reference architectures for the services being built, as well as data replication and recovery, if needed, offers the best possible foundation for a secure environment, both today and into the future. As webinar participants discussed, businesses seek specific security and business continuity features in their hybrid cloud platform:
- 69% of global IT leaders seek automated replication of data
- 62% seek push-button failover initiation
- 53% seek advanced data management and protection tools
A strong platform helps protect business applications and data. It’s also critical to have the right skills to ensure optimal deployment.
- Using containers to modernize and deploy applications in a hybrid environment can help keep individual applications secure. Because containers make use of operating systems to create logical “mini-environments” that remain separate and isolated from other workloads on the same infrastructure, any malicious programs that breach the infrastructure remain isolated from container workloads. Traditional applications are not isolated from each other within a VM, which can give opportunity for malware to penetrate other programs.
- Engaging a trusted partner to help with security can help achieve “best practice level” protection in hybrid and multicloud environments. Whether it is mapping all of the infrastructures and data interdependencies and ensuring that consistent policies are applied across the IT estate, or getting assistance to ensure that a recently updated security patch doesn’t interfere with your custom tweaks to an OpenSource project, getting the help of an integration expert can enhance confidence in the overall security posture of your hybrid cloud deployment. By partnering with the right technology and global systems integrator (GSI) partners—like Red Hat and Capgemini—companies can build and maintain a secure hybrid cloud, without the DIY hassle. The partner can help ensure that you have integrated governance over your security and compliance using a single platform to manage all of your infrastructures. Look for a partner that is certified in all major industry and national regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and Centre for Internet Security benchmarks. The right partner also ensures cross-region resiliency and at least 99.9% availability to ensure your critical systems are always up and running, maximizing productivity and minimizing business disruptions.
As our recent webinar highlighted, hybrid cloud security and disaster recovery practices can be challenging to implement with consistency, but they are critical elements to digital transformation success. By partnering with an expert GSI to implement a comprehensive security strategy, businesses can rest assured that their data and operations will remain protected, both today and in the future.
For more information about creating your Red Hat® OpenShift® environment with Capgemini, please read our white paper at https://www.redhat.com/en/resources/cloud-management-for-digital-transformation-analyst-material.
