Intelligent CISO Issue 57 | Page 67

decrypting myths
As Digital Transformation accelerates in the Middle East , organisations are increasingly adopting cloud services and shifting away from traditional network security to cloudbased security . A Zero Trust architecture unifies access across cloud and on-prem apps and ensures the right users have access to resources . Lawrence Morrison , VP of Middle East and Africa at Zscaler , explains the business outcomes of adopting a Zero
Trust approach and three steps every organisation should consider in defining which cloud strategy is best .

Steps organisations must take to adopt the right Zero Trust approach and define a cloud strategy

w

What is cloud adoption and what are some of its benefits ?
Simply put , cloud adoption is the process where organisations in a bid to reduce cost , mitigate risk and achieve scalability of database capabilities , use Internet-based computing to process resources and data from one device to another without any hurdle of location . This means software and services reside and operate in ‘ the cloud ’ instead of a local compute .
Cloud adoption is a major part of Digital Transformation . For example , non-differentiating applications such as HR , Finance and CRM can effectively be consumed through cloud subscription services like Workday and Salesforce . com .
Also , most organisations are not in the business of managing data centres with all the capital and operation costs associated leading to a ‘ lift and shift ’ of on-premises applications to public cloud infrastructure such as Azure , AWS and Google .
The major benefit of cloud adoption is that cloud services are fully automated and can be spun up and down instantly , allowing organisations to be nimbler and accelerate their time to market depending on their industry .
How do traditional networks and security stacks cope with cloud adoption ?
Our journey at Zscaler , supporting over 150 global data centres and processing over 250 billion secured transactions per day , has proven that traditional hubs and spoke networks are architected to protect users only when they are on the network connecting to applications in the self-managed data centre . This means all traffic is sent through a security stack comprising various products before heading out to the Internet or data centre .
Now that users are often working remotely and applications are increasingly residing in various locations , the better solution will be to adopt a Zero Trust architecture to unify access across cloud and on-prem www . intelligentciso . com
67