A report from Venafi highlights the urgent need for improved machine identity management in cloud-native environments, as organisations grapple with the security implications of rapid technological advances and the integration of microservices architectures.
The Impact of Machine Identities on the State of Cloud-Native Security 2023 research report from Venafi examines how to maximise competitive advantages modern companies are evolving toward highly scalable, flexible and resilient applications.
This trend has driven widespread adoption of cloud-native technologies like Kubernetes and microservices-based application architectures.
But in their haste to transition to these modern environments, many organisations may not have fully considered unique security requirements, such as the impact of machine identities and their management.
Machine identities are critical to secure sensitive microservices and resources that can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet. To properly implement the latest advances in technology, organisations need to establish the identity of cloud-native machines such as containers, microservices, DevOps artifacts and API connections.
To function securely, all these interconnected cloud-native machines must be able to rapidly verify their identities with each other. Yet, the management of this proliferation of machine identities can be challenging in cloud-native environments and organisations may have trouble keeping up with today’s rapid pace of continual innovation.
The report examines the top threats and challenges that are impacting cloud-native security and emphasises the foundational role of machine identities within cloud-native security.
To better understand the state of cloud-native machine identity management, Venafi sponsored an independent survey of 800 security and IT leaders in large organisations across the US, UK, France and Germany.
The goal was to gather data that revealed how companies are approaching cloud-native security, where they are facing challenges, which trends they are adopting, and who is responsible for setting strategy and implementing security and machine identity management in cloud-native environments.
The cloud has changed the application lifecycle in ways that many organisations did not anticipate. Development teams are now expected to deliver production code at warp speed, but security teams are struggling to keep pace.
At the centre of the trade-off between speed and security is the management of machine identities.
Yet, many organisations are still trying to strategise the best ways to integrate machine identities into their cloud native application development cycles. They are unsure who should own the security of machine identities going forward, although many are shifting priorities to move security closer to the development process.
The report offers some key takeaways to keep in mind for when plans are drawn up for a cloud native machine identity management strategy moving forward.
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