According to Gartner 79% of companies have experienced at least one cloud data breach during the pandemic. Remote work is here to stay, and the concept of securing a perimeter has essentially ended. Traditional application security measures are broken. The need to innovate faster and shift to cloud-native application architectures isn’t just driving complexity, it’s creating significant vulnerability blind spots also.
Under the thumb of the pandemic, enterprises and IT leaders had to look for tech solutions that were resilient and agile to empower the remote workforce. To sustain business continuity plans, organizations shifted workloads to the cloud. As much as cloud adoption offers flexibility and productivity, it also exposes organizations to cyber threats and data breaches. So the question remains if moving to the cloud is the right thing to do and if so how to protect it from the new risks given that most organizations believe that application security should be completely automated to keep pace with dynamic clouds and rapid software development practices.

As organizations expand their third-party ecosystem, many are challenged with executing core activities that are critical to operations, risk profiles, and compliance posture without compromising the quality of data collection, evaluation, and mitigation measures increasingly outsourcing business activities to 3rd-party vendors. It is critical for an organization to be vigilant when selecting the right 3rd-party vendor with the appropriate security posture, as many vendors are hosting, processing and transmitting sensitive regulatory information with unrestrained access to our IT assets. At the highest level, third-party incidents can result in reputational damage, non-compliance, or even criminal activity, which can negatively impact earnings and shareholder value. To address this challenge, many organizations are investing in technology to support vendor risk management. Technology isn’t the entire answer to managing third-party risk, however the right technology or collection of technologies, coupled with optimal processes, can enable organizations to bridge the gap.