“Firewalls and the Cloud” Helps Capture the Reality of Security in Today’s Cloud Environments
Eighty-three percent of organisations have concerns about deploying traditional firewalls in the cloud, according to a survey sponsored by Barracuda Networks. The top two concerns include inappropriate pricing and licensing for the cloud (39 percent) and lack of integration preventing cloud automation (34 percent).
The “Firewalls and the Cloud” survey of more than 600 IT security professionals responsible for cloud environments around the world, was conducted by Dimensional Research. It provides an overview of experiences and attitudes about cloud security. A wide range of questions on the current state of security in the cloud were sent to participants who were identified as having security responsibility in environments with significant cloud investments.
Despite concerns about deploying traditional firewalls in the cloud, almost all survey respondents see value in cloud-specific firewall capabilities. In particular, 74 percent of respondents indicated that integration with cloud management, monitoring and automation capabilities as the most beneficial cloud-specific firewall capability, followed by ease of deployment and configuration (59 percent) and the ability to regulate traffic flows between on-premises and cloud data centres (56 percent).
The survey also looked at how security automation benefits DevOps teams. Fifty-six percent of organisations surveyed have adopted DevOps, DevSecOps, or CI/CD development methodologies (continuous integration and continuous deployment). Of these, 93 percent have faced challenges integrating security into those practices. Limitations with existing security solutions was the top challenge reported (67 percent), followed by application developers not comfortable with security (48 percent) and security processes remaining a bottleneck (48 percent).
“We’re continuing to see questions and concerns around how organisations should approach security with their cloud deployments, especially from larger companies,” said Tim Jefferson, VP public cloud, Barracuda. “While there are a number of reasons for this, moving to the cloud requires a new way of thinking about security for organisations that are used to operating under traditional data centre architecture. Using security tools specifically designed for the public cloud can actually make a business more secure than they were when they operated purely on-premise.”
Barracuda Cloud Generation Firewalls (CloudGen Firewall, and CloudGen WAF) are designed to provide network and application security for cloud-only and hybrid-cloud environments. They provide cloud-specific features including metered billing, API support for DevSecOps teams, fully meshed connectivity and scalability to help organisations align security with their cloud deployments. Highlights include:
- Well-architected for the public cloud – Integrate directly with public cloud fabric, provide API integrations for DevOps tools and automation workflows, and centrally manage across hybrid environments. This gives customers the benefits of the cloud without compromising their security posture.
- Support for cloud-specific use cases – Support unique requirements of the cloud including horizontal scalability, distributed policy sets, fully meshed connectivity and north-south traffic management. Meeting these requirements allows customers to leverage the benefits of cloud automation around deployment, autoscaling, high-availability, networking, and monitoring.
- Match customer’s cloud consumption models – Licensing that allows customers to deploy security in alignment with their current public cloud consumption model.
Resources:
For full access to “Firewalls and the Cloud,” please visit: https://assets.barracuda.com/assets/docs/dms/Firewalls_and_the_Cloud_Survey_Results.pdf
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About Barracuda Networks, Inc.
Barracuda simplifies IT with cloud-enabled solutions that empower customers to protect their networks, applications and data, regardless of where they reside. These powerful, easy-to-use and affordable solutions are trusted by more than 150,000 organisations worldwide and are delivered in appliance, virtual appliance, cloud and hybrid deployment configurations. Barracuda’s customer-centric business model focuses on delivering high-value, subscription-based IT solutions that provide end-to-end network and data protection. For additional information, please visit barracuda.com.
