Technology is advancing faster than ever before and puts pressure on organizations to quickly update their digital strategies, or else they risk falling behind and becoming irrelevant. By adopting cloud-native technologies, modern infrastructure shifts are enabling organizations to scale beyond premises to take advantage of the enhanced flexibility and capacity of the cloud. It’s a cautionary tale though. This rapid adoption has led to expanded attack surfaces in the estate, making applications more vulnerable to security risks, which could negatively impact an organization’s reputation or revenue. This rapid transformation has left technologists without the necessary tools and insights to achieve full visibility into their new hybrid infrastructure.

As a result, organizations are experiencing an uptick in security threats within their Kubernetes environments. According to Red Hat, 90% of businesses have experienced at least one Kubernetes-related security incident in the last 12 months, which led to revenue or customer loss for 37% of respondents. Additionally, Aqua Security investigated Kubernetes clusters belonging to more than 350 organizations, open-source projects and individuals, and found that all of them were unprotected, with at least 60% breached.

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Which of the following best describes how you currently monitor and manage systems across your hybrid cloud environment?(Required)

Multiple separate tools for different environments

Multiple separate tools for different monitoring and management functions

Single consolidated dashboard

Custom built monitoring and management solution

No full monitoring and management solution

Don’t know

How valuable would it be for your monitoring and management solution to incorporate predictive analytics to help you identify and address system issues that are critical and not waste time or effort working through all the data and “noise” that is not critical?(Required)

Extremely valuable

Moderately valuable

Somewhat valuable

Slightly valuable

Not valuable

How do you most typically address potential system issues BEFORE they impact your operations?(Required)

Automated workflows and playbooks to remediate potential issues as soon as they are detected

An orchestrated response process that leverages automation, AI, and human expertise to rapidly respond to potential issues

Advanced monitoring tools such as predictive analytics and anomaly detection to proactively identify and address potential issues

Respond to issues as they arise, using manual processes and troubleshooting techniques

A combination of automated remediation, orchestrated response, and/or proactive monitoring to address potential system issues

Don’t know

Other

What methods does your organization use to control and monitor cloud/IT spending?(Required)

Centralized procurement processes

Pre-approved budget thresholds

Automated cost monitoring tools

Department-level spending controls

Regular cost audits and reviews

Cloud cost optimization platform

Approval workflows for resource provisioning

Native financial operations tools provided by the cloud provider

No formal controls in place

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

Which methods do you rely on most to detect security vulnerabilities in your systems?(Required)

Automated scanning tools

Manual assessments

Vendor notifications

Threat modeling (for early detection)

None of these

Don’t know

Other

Please specify:

What are the TWO most common ways you prioritize vulnerabilities to address within your environment?(Required)

Based on potential impact

Based on exploitability

Regulatory compliance requirements

Based on CVSS scores

Risk-based analysis of multiple factors

First-in-first-out approach

No formal prioritization process

Don’t know

How do you typically handle system updates and security patches?(Required)

Automated updates and patches

Manually review and apply updates and patches on a regular schedule

A combination of automation and manual review

Apply updates and patches on an as-needed basis.

Outsourced update and patch management

No defined process

Don’t know

Other

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Successful management of modern application infrastructures requires unified visibility, which is limited in traditional approaches to application security and vulnerability monitoring. To address the rising vulnerabilities, developers and security teams must first stop operating in siloes by ensuring they are collaborating throughout the application development process. Teams must also consider adopting new solutions that will provide them with a more unified view of a fragmented application infrastructure. This will enable them to quickly identify vulnerabilities within the IT estate, the likelihood of exploitation and their business risk.

Business Risk Observability is Key

Full visibility into hybrid infrastructures is crucial for supporting the secure development and deployment of modern applications. Technologists need a comprehensive overview of security threats, including their location and insight into how they could affect the application. By spotting and correlating potential security risks across different application entities, such as business transactions, containers, pods, services and workloads, technologists can quickly attend to the issue and reduce mean time to remediation (MTTR).

However, business context expands upon this traditional security data. In addition to providing the visibility required to locate and assess security threats, business context helps technologists prioritize and remediate risks based on potential business impact.

Business risk observability combines application performance data and business context with vulnerability detection and security intelligence, making it possible to identify business risks. With business risk observability, technologists can generate a business risk score for all vulnerabilities to help teams prioritize issues based on the severity of issue that could cause the most damage to the business’s financial or reputational aspects.

Fundamentally, business risk observability unifies applications and security teams around a central repository for comprehensive data on application availability, performance and security. In an age defined by zero-day threats, necessitating cross-functional collaboration for secure deployments of contemporary applications, business risk observability establishes a framework for implementing a DevSecOps approach within the IT department. By integrating security into the application lifecycle from its inception, development teams adhere to the organization’s most critical security priorities and embed robust security measures into every line of code. This culminates in fortified applications and simplified security management, pre-release, during deployment and post-release.

The Adoption of Business Risk Observability is Gaining Momentum

The shift to hybrid and cloud-native infrastructures has led to more vulnerable landscapes, thereby propelling the demand for business risk observability. The shift to a security approach for the full application stack, a Cisco study, found that 93% of technologists now recognize the significance of contextualizing security and prioritizing vulnerability fixes based on potential business impact.

To address the higher threat levels in Kubernetes environments, it is essential for organizations to embrace innovative solutions and ways of working. Gartner projects that 95% of new digital workloads will leverage cloud native platforms by 2025, which means the challenges of fragmented infrastructures are likely to grow. As the fallout from a potential security breach could be detrimental to a business, organizations should strongly consider implementing an observability solution.

The modern IT estate is becoming more vulnerable to security threats and technologists need a key form of defense — unified visibility and business context. Business risk observability serves as a key form of defense for organizations, empowering IT teams with the ability to monitor, prioritize and respond to security issues swiftly, expediting response times and safeguarding their organizations and customers consistently.