This is part of an ongoing 2021 predictions series. We’ve asked top cyber experts to contribute their insights and expertise to provide a look ahead at what the new year may bring to cybersecurity.
Avishai Sharlin, Division President, Amdocs Technology:
"The disruption brought about by COVID-19 has seen the acceleration of cloud adoption, with 91 percent of enterprise IT environments now relying on cloud solutions. We can expect the cloud's popularity to continue to grow because of its proven track record with businesses, who have successfully used the technology to rapidly respond to issues with targeted solutions. As adoption continues to accelerate among enterprises, hybrid, multi-cloud environments in particular will be a critical focus area. However, this accelerated adoption doesn’t come without concerns. A recent survey by Amdocs found that 60 percent of IT managers in the US, UK and India said security was one of their biggest cloud-based challenges.
50 percent of IT leaders are currently reskilling/training employees on cloud security practices, according to that same survey, and this will be a critical piece of the cloud security puzzle moving into 2021.
Though public clouds can provide a secure environment, the sheer number of available options can cause human error, leading to breaches. For example, one must ensure they don't expose resources to the wider internet, or assume that putting something in the public cloud automatically makes it secure. In reality, it's not, unless you put in guardrails that enable it to be. This becomes even more critical in hybrid cloud models, where organizations play in public and on-premises environments, making it more likely that an exploit may occur."