To rise above the threats of growing cyber attacks, businesses have been advised to migrate their data to the cloud for protection. The Managing Director, Oracle Nigeria, Mr Adebayo Sanni, who gave this charge, said aside the security architecture, cloud computing would also help businesses achieve efficiency and regulatory compliance.
According to him, many organisations are struggling to cope with the increasing sophistication of today’s threat landscape. “Zero-day exploits are on the rise and insider attacks are becoming increasingly prevalent, requiring more refined analysis and real-time remediation. Security teams, already overtaxed and understaffed, are being asked to increasingly identify and prevent new threats”.
He noted that fortunately, cloud technology has brought solution to the challenges as it can ingest massive amounts of operational and security telemetry, analyse it in real time using purpose-built machine learning and react to findings using automation. Citing a recent Oracle and KPMG report on how organisations are responding to security challenges, Sanni, the threat landscape was increasingly complex and varied. “66 per cent of companies surveyed have suffered a significant business operations interruption in the past 24 months; 90 per cent of firms say at least half of their data is sensitive information; 38 per cent reported issues detecting and responding to cloud security incidents, making this the most cited cybersecurity challenge in the survey”.
He noted that companies have been responding to the security threats in many ways, including hiring CEOs who come from the cybersecurity space, as they know how to manage risk, and speeding up their migration to the cloud - with mature users understanding that cloud computing provides better security than on-premise environments.
In addition to moving to the cloud, he said organisations also need to automate their systems and educate the people. “With security at the core of a modern organisation, good governance for managing systems and people effectively is critical; strong authentication and encryption becomes a necessity. Backup, archiving and storage helps to further protect against ransomware, and mobile device management becomes an instrumental means of controlling information at the edge.
“It is also not just about the technology; industry estimates put nearly half of all security breaches down to human error, and educating employees on how to spot suspicious emails can help cut down on phishing, whaling and other attacks that rely on unsuspecting end-users to click on links to infected websites, or open attachments that install malware or ransomware” he said.
The Oracle MD pointed out that the advances in technologies that enable the threats are also providing companies with the tools that are required to combat them, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, which is especially vital in an environment characterised by a shortage in critical skills. “By 2025, 80 per cent of cloud operations risk will vanish entirely, and a higher degree of intelligent automation will permeate the cloud platform. Using machine learning and AI techniques, autonomous operations will anticipate outcomes, take remedial action, and be aware of real-time risks - becoming the catalyst that further accelerates enterprise cloud adoption” he said.
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