The SANS Institute’s 2023 multicloud survey shows multicloud adoption is increasing rapidly, with 55% of respondents using multiple providers to deliver the agility, flexibility, choice, and scale their business mission requires. A centralized cloud security governance framework is essential to protecting the data and applications in these complex IT environments.
The complete SANS 2023 Multicloud Survey report can be downloaded here. A recording of the accompanying webcast—led by myself and featuring Todd Morneau (Product Manager, Corelight), Bob Hansmann (Security Products Team, Infoblox), Tamer Salman (Principal Research Manager, Microsoft) and Oz Wilder (Partner Director of Product Management, Microsoft) can be viewed here.
The latest iteration of the annual SANS Multicloud Survey makes it clear that organizations' cloud footprints and their use of multiple cloud service providers (CSPs) are both increasing at a rapidly accelerating pace. Security teams urgently need to adapt to the complex, heterogeneous IT environments that inevitably result and the security challenges they bring with them. Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity is one of the key drivers of the multicloud trend, and securing disparate systems, applications, and end users — in most cases with multiple single-sign-on (SSO) solutions — is highly challenging. Organizations using multiple CSPs need centralized security governance frameworks that consider the special requirements of private clouds and use security information event management (SIEM) deployment architectures from multiple service providers and with hybrid cloud configurations. The SANS 2023 Multicloud Survey outlines the multicloud landscape, explores key trends, benefits, and challenges, and offers security recommendations for organizations developing or using a multicloud strategy.
Organizations’ Cloud Footprints Continue to Expand at a Rapidly Accelerating Rate
The use of cloud computing continues to increase dramatically in both size and complexity. 16% of survey respondents reported their organizations use more than 100 Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts and 12% use more than 100 Microsoft Azure subscriptions and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) accounts. Almost 40% of respondents indicated their organizations use more than 100 of each type of storage container (AWS S3 buckets, Azure storage containers, and Google Cloud Storage buckets), and more than 15% said that the number of storage containers they use has increased by more than 20% in the past three years.
The Key Takeaway: As organizations’ cloud footprints continue to grow, expanding from tens to hundreds and even thousands of accounts, their security teams must urgently implement plans and practices to manage cloud scale and future change and expansion.
M&As Are a Primary Factor in Multicloud Usage
The survey results clearly show that M&A activity is a primary factor in the adoption of a new CSP, with majorities of respondents indicating M&As accounted for the adoption of GCP (62.8% of respondents), AWS (54.3%), and Microsoft Azure (37%). The lower percentage for Azure is interesting and may be explained by the fact that Microsoft sometimes leverages its Microsoft 365 platform to gain a cloud foothold in organizations and encourage Azure adoption.
The Key Takeaway: Security teams with organizations undergoing M&As must be prepared to integrate new cloud accounts — possibly working with unfamiliar CSPs with different architectural approaches — rapidly and securely.
Multiple SSO Solutions Are the Reality in Most Organizations
There’s no question that one SSO solution is ideal, but most organizations will continue to have multiple SSO solutions for the foreseeable future. Roughly half (55%) of survey respondents indicated they use multiple solutions. Here again, the most common reason was M&A activity, reported by 55% of respondents, but that factor was closely followed by the lack of a central authority requiring a single solution (48%) and different teams supporting different services (47%). Perhaps the most interesting result in this area is that only 14% of respondents reported their organizations are working toward using a single SSO solution. This suggests that there may be a view that using multiple providers is “good enough,” that it’s seen as the normal state of affairs or that SSO is simply overshadowed by other priorities.
The Key Takeaway: Look for cloud-agnostic third-party SSO solutions, avoid vendor lock-in, — especially when it comes to data — and only consider solutions that support data sovereignty.
Securing Private Clouds Is Central to Any Comprehensive Multicloud Strategy
More than 28% of survey respondents use private clouds for one-quarter or more of their compute workloads. There are good reasons for this continuing reliance on the private cloud: public cloud computing offers very real advantages including scale, elasticity, and pay-as-you-go pricing, but some classifications of data are simply too critical to entrust to the public model.
The Key Takeaway: Security teams should recognize the importance of private clouds in their organizations’ IT environments — whether they’re currently in use or simply a future possibility — and make their special demands a central focus of their security strategies.
SIEM Frequently Includes Multiple Vendor Solutions and Hybrid Cloud Configurations
The three largest CSPs all offer SIEM-as-a-service solutions, and excellent third-party solutions are available as well. A single-vendor solution, whether hosted in the cloud or on-premises, is the optimal approach, but 30% of survey respondents reported using multiple SIEM vendors, with 8% of that group using solutions hosted both in the cloud and on-premises. This complexity may be reflected in organizations' inability to respond to security events in a timely manner. Just 39% of the respondents reported that their organizations respond to security events “daily” or “as often as the outputs are true positives.”
The Key Takeaway: Whatever deployment approach security teams take to SIEM, they must ensure that they’re able to detect and respond to security events rapidly and efficiently.
Related SANS Institute Courses
SEC510: Public Cloud Security: AWS, Azure, and GCP enables security professionals to manage the complexities and nuances of the big three CSPs, with 20 hands-on labs and bonus challenges.
SEC388: Introduction to Cloud Computing and Security covers the foundational elements of modern cloud computing and security, including common terminology, cloud services, and cloud-based security concerns and solutions.
LDR520: Cloud Security for Leaders focuses on what managers, directors, and security leaders need to know about developing plans and roadmaps and managing cloud security implementation capabilities.
SEC549: Enterprise Cloud Security Architecture provides students the skills they need to create secure identity and network patterns in the cloud to support business at any stage of the cloud journey and includes 20 hands-on labs.
The SANS 2023 Multicloud Survey Methodology
The SANS 2023 Multicloud Survey targeted cloud users worldwide whose organizations use more than one CSP. The top four roles among the 210 qualified respondents were application developer, security administrator/analyst, auditor, and cloud security engineer. The top four industries were application development, cybersecurity, banking and finance, and manufacturing.
The Bottom Line
Multicloud adoption is increasing and will continue to increase rapidly as organizations look for increased agility, flexibility, choice, and scalability. Security teams need to recognize the growing importance of this trend and look for architectural approaches and technical solutions to the security challenges it will introduce.
