How is Cloud Security Accelerating the Pace of Innovation?

On a rainy autumn day in October 2000, the formidable Michael Schumacher was starting from the pole position at the Suzuka Grand Prix – arguably the most gruelling circuit on the Formula 1 calendar back in the day. The challenge is a peculiar “figure eight” layout where the straight part of the circuit crosses over the front section by means of an overpass. Formula 1, a sport characterized by speed, needed a special skill to win at Suzuka – that of tactical deceleration, or how well a driver slows down a car that is singularly engineered for speed.

With the Constructors’ Championship on the line, Ferrari engineers were aware that the afternoon’s incessant rain only made the maneuver that much more difficult. A careful planning of pitstops, along with Schumacher’s superhuman braking skills around the notorious bend, was going to be key. The margin of error was practically non-existent.

Even though they are a world apart, your cloud strategy is very similar to the situation the Ferrari team found themselves in Suzuka. For instance, everything about the cloud is designed to accelerate the velocity of your organization’s technology adoption. Whether it is the ability to scale and serve peak load demand or to build lightning-fast CI/CD pipelines for your engineering teams to deliver innovation at a speed previously unthought-of – cloud adoption signals high momentum.

However, leaders must pause and think about the equivalent of the Suzuka “figure eight” in their cloud adoption strategy – the notorious blind spot that could completely nullify the momentum advantage that the cloud naturally provides.

The analogous braking strategy for cloud adoption is a robust Cloud and Hybrid Security Policy. The constituents of such a policy are the relevant documented rules, encoded operating and governance models, and staff that are trained on security standard operating procedures. Such an organization is best placed to not merely capitalize on the benefits of the cloud but also protect its digital estate from the perpetual threat of attack.

Over the last several years, Locuz has worked with Security Leaders who have been at the forefront of designing and implementing strategies to minimize the threat posed by malicious actors. In a world where digital nativity is the default, this job does not have defined work hours and, much like a flawlessly executed race strategy, is not noticed until the unfortunate event of a disaster. For when such a breach occurs, whether in the form of a DDoS or a runtime attack, it can bring the entire organization to its knees and compromise the very notion of business as usual.

We are thankful to our customer leaders for working with us and jointly creating a “Security by Design” strategy that comprehensively covers security in a “cloud and hybrid first” world.

In a race that lasted just under an hour and a half, covering 310 kilometers across 53 laps, Michael Schumacher eventually won the Suzuka Grand Prix in 2000 by a margin of 1.8 seconds – a margin so thin that it would make you wonder if the victory was that of skill or chance. Just like the Ferrari strategists guiding the fearsome Schumacher at Suzuka, you understand the importance of a good security policy as your own strategic decelerator to your organization’s cloud adoption and the enormous risk it mitigates.

What follows is an outcome of collaboration between our experts who have worked on the most demanding problems in an environment that has presented a variety of operational and tactical challenges. As you read through the following topics, do absorb the importance of each component in orchestrating this critical security symphony. I hope you enjoy and adapt.  

Cloud Security Playbook Articles:

Cyber-forward Cloud Strategy for Secure Cloud Deployment and Migration

Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) – All you need to know!

Cloud Native and App Modernization Security concerns – Exploring Container Security

Application Security in a Cloud First-World

Bridging the Visibility Gap on Cloud

Future of Networking – ZTNA (Zero Trust Network Access)

Shared Responsibility on Cloud