Today, the requirements of business innovation lead most firms to have multiple teams with varying priorities managing dozens of data sources with varying architectures. This makes it impossible to adequately safeguard entire data repositories using standard methods. This post will discuss why and how you should abandon segmented data security management in order to enable easier, consistent end-to-end data security that scales to your organization and genuinely creates an effective, unified strategy.
Various data source environments
When a complete organization’s data repository was housed in a few on-premises databases, managing data security was much easier. The urge to innovate quickly and cheaply has made increased dependence on the cost-effective pay-as-you-go architectures and scalable database capabilities offered by cloud-native environments an enticing choice for practically any firm these days.
To increase flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in, most businesses choose a multi- or hybrid-cloud strategy. As a result, security teams are attempting to handle orders of magnitude more data sources, some of which are on-premises and some of which are in private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments.
Each data source has its unique structure and requires its own set of APIs and methods. Companies are realising that their conventional solutions for extending security controls beyond on-premise data repositories do not function in these new cloud-native contexts.
They are also learning that there is a considerable skills gap in dealing with these difficulties. This, combined with economic constraints and the rapid rate of change, significantly limits their ability to preserve their data vaults. As a high-level difficulty, combining structured and unstructured data sources on-premises and in private, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments remains the single most significant impediment to adopting a successful data security strategy.
Under time constraints to innovate
A developer’s dream is to create new applications in cloud-native settings. A developer can spin up a new kit in a cloud environment to support an application in about five minutes; no physical equipment or hardware provisioning is necessary, and there is no need to put it in the data center or network it, etc. DBAs and developers in the cloud can spin up and tear down database instances in a couple of weeks, sometimes without the awareness of security teams.
This kind of agility places a significant pressure on the security solutions and processes required to keep up with the rate of change. To protect data in these contexts, security personnel must collaborate across teams, which, although possible, is objectively challenging. Many enterprises that hastened their cloud migration strategy without a corresponding jump in security modernization are left with a security controls gap and a shortage of crucial skills.
Enter the unified data security methodology
As previously stated, new cloud-native development technologies have enabled organizations to acquire unprecedented levels of flexibility, business resilience, and investment security. The productivity of DevOps teams has never been higher. Complementary platforms now provide more advanced data security features than ever before.