Relying on cloud technology to drive innovation, streamline operations, and stay competitive comes with challenges — namely, maintaining a robust and unified security posture in an increasingly complex digital environment.
Rapid cloud adoption and digital transformation initiatives have led many organizations to seek out point solutions to address specific cloud security challenges. This often results in tool sprawl, which creates another set of challenges affecting the ability to manage cloud security.
Modern enterprises need a holistic approach to cloud security management — one that enables, rather than hinders, the timely achievement of business outcomes. By understanding the challenges of tool sprawl and moving towards a platform approach, decision makers can help drive innovation, obtain operational efficiencies and maintain a competitive advantage in today’s rapidly evolving digital environment.
In this post, we look at the importance of consolidating security tooling for the cloud.
The Rise of Cloud Security Tool Sprawl
Organizations rely on 30+ tools for overall security, with six to ten tools dedicated to cloud security. Upwards of 75% of organizations, according to the 2023 State of Cloud-Native Security Report 2023, say that the number of cloud security tools they use creates blind spots that affect their ability to prioritize risk and prevent threats.
Tool sprawl stems from a variety of sources. Organizations typically employ 3-10 cloud service providers (CSPs), each with a set of proprietary tools. As new threats emerge, the ad hoc adoption of single-use tools is common. It’s also common for organizations to introduce new tools without proper evaluation or integration with existing systems — or to allow different teams to purchase and use their preferred tools.
But security becomes untenable as tools amass, leaving organizations with a fragmented and unmanageable security posture. Everyday security tasks, such as tracking vulnerability dependencies or accessing effective permissions for all users, are challenging at best. In addition to creating a state of high security risk, tool sprawl increases redundancy, inefficiency, costs, data silos, confusion, stress, and staff turnover. It’s not surprising that 77% of organizations report a struggle to identify what security tools are necessary to achieve their security goals.
On some level, though, organizations know the answer — 81% say they would benefit from a centralized security solution that sits across all of their cloud accounts and services.
Embracing Consolidation
To overcome the challenges inherent to tool sprawl, organizations will need to look into consolidation of the existing cloud security toolset and adopt a platform approach to cloud strategy. By unifying point solutions under a single, comprehensive platform, businesses can streamline their security management, reducing complexity as well as the cost associated with maintaining multiple point solutions.
This platform-centered strategy helps organizations to establish a consistent approach to manage their security posture across clouds. It also provides the all-important visibility across the application lifecycle while allocating cloud resources. Ultimately, embracing consolidation through the platform approach will empower enterprises to fortify their cloud security and maximize the benefits of the cloud.
Consolidation is also emphasized by Gartner in their recent Gartner Market Guide for Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms. Gartner believes that traditional point solutions create fragmented risk views and excessive alerts, whereas the one platform approach enables a single, developer-centric integrated solution for managing cloud-native application risks.
Business and Organizational Benefits of Consolidating Cloud Security Tooling
Consolidating cloud security tooling not only addresses the challenges associated with tool sprawl but also brings the business and organizational benefits of efficiently achieving and maintaining security. Benefits of consolidated include:
- Enhanced Security and Risk Management: Consolidation protects your company's assets, intellectual property, and customer data. By reducing the risk of data breaches and regulatory fines organizations can build trust and confidence which sets the stage for long-term success and growth.
- Increased Operational Efficiency: Effective cloud security solutions automate security procedures so IT can focus on strategic goals instead of maintaining a surfeit of point tools. The smooth deployment of secure apps reduces the time to market for new services and products. This improved operational efficiency, resulting in cost savings and higher company productivity.
- Improved Compliance and Governance: A comprehensive CNAPP helps your organization to comply with industry standards, such as GDPR, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. Organizations can develop a uniform security posture throughout their cloud environment with centralized policy administration and real-time monitoring capabilities that simplify the compliance and lower the risk of noncompliance.
- Scalability and Flexibility: A cloud-native security solution lets businesses extend their security coverage to cloud infrastructure as needed. Built-in adaptability allows you to keep step with changing business needs and new threats. With the flexibility to scale security, you’re free to seek new possibilities and grow your digital footprint.
- Seamless integration with DevSecOps: Transitioning towards DevSecOps is difficult when you need to integrate multiple point solutions. Having a unified cloud security platform that covers all stages helps to facilitate and adopt the DevSecOps transition. The one platform approach is more efficient and helps organizations to deliver secure applications more rapidly.
The advantages of consolidation empower organizations to thrive in a competitive marketplace.
How Prisma Cloud Helps
Prisma Cloud is a comprehensive unified platform that does what siloed tools can’t. Instead of a fragmented security posture, you get near real-time visibility into your cloud stack — across code, build, deploy, run stages — as well as shift-left risk prevention via seamless integration with IDEs, code repos, and CI/CD tools. Consolidation facilitates a DevSecOps culture. Prisma Cloud reduces security friction while making collaboration across teams feasible and improving developer productivity.
According to Frost & Sullivan, who recently awarded Palo Alto Networks with the 2023 Frost & Sullivan Global Company of the Year Award in the Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP) industry, “Prisma Cloud distinguishes itself from other CNAPP solutions by offering a platform that covers five critical cloud security areas, providing organizations with best-in-class security across the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC).”
If you have tried Prisma Cloud, we invite you to take it for a test drive. Discover the Prisma Cloud advantage with a free 30-day trial.