Post Syndicated from Aaron Wells original https://blog.rapid7.com/2022/11/17/better-cloud-security-shouldnt-require-bigger-budgets/

Stretching what you’re given

How can you do more when you’re constantly being given the same or less? When security budgets don’t match the pace of the cloud operations they’re tasked with securing, the only thing to do is become an expert in the stretch. It’s hard, and you might currently be under increasing stress to pull it all off.

While total overall budgets will indeed decrease, Gartner recently forecast that spending on cybersecurity and risk management would increase by 11.3% in 2023, driven in large part by a shift to cloud platforms. And what was a big factor in the increase in cloud adoption? You guessed it: the switch to remote or hybrid work models during the height of pandemic mitigation measures. These days you might have more to back up your argument for an increase in funding.

In the 2020 scramble to keep people safe by urging them to both stay home and stay employed, workforces quickly became virtual, more distributed, and incredibly reliant on cloud platforms to enable connectivity to each other. Businesses that might have dipped their toes in pre-pandemic are now taking the full cloud plunge post-pandemic.

The promise of the cloud is an interesting point to discuss. It can be cheaper to scale into the cloud, but depending on how it’s done and in what industry, it might actually require a bigger piece of the budget. But it can still be empowering and flexible. In other words, budgets will most likely keep increasing for cloud adoption. With all that said, if you’re still having trouble acquiring more budget for security, what should you do?

Finding the right fit

We’re not talking about a doomsday scenario where you’ll never see another increase in your budget. Cybersecurity and cloud security are top-of-mind topics for companies and nations around the world. However, solutions have evolved to address security organizations’ budgetary concerns. And there are reputable providers who have created offerings that can do more without asking more of your budget. This more-with-less scenario has the potential to satisfy across the board by helping you to:

• Focus on use cases – What kind of cloud security do you need? Needlessly spending money on solutions you don’t need is tantamount to criminal behavior in the current global economic crisis. Make sure you know exactly what you need to protect, how far your perimeters extend, and the general types of available security (CSPM, CWPP, etc.). InsightCloudSec from Rapid7 is a unified platform that incorporates multiple use cases and types of cloud security.  
• Extrapolate potential costs and prove security’s worth – Once you know what you need and the type(s) of solutions that can address it, it’s a good idea to partner with whomever controls your security budgets. Because it’s less about the costs or subscription fees you see today and more about extrapolating cost savings as cloud environments, data transfer, storage, and other aspects of that adoption grow. Then you’ll know how much or little you’ll need to engage in budget-stretching heroics.
• Pinpoint under-one-umbrella solutions – Do you want to deal with one vendor or multiple? In the latter scenario, keep in mind the multiple support teams you’ll juggle as well as the different platforms on which those solutions will operate. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but there are vendors that can provide a suite of broad-range capabilities so you have one point of contact and can better operationalize your cloud security.

About that whole “proving security’s worth” thing…

In this day and age, you really shouldn’t have to prove your organization’s worth. But you most likely feel that way every time you have to fight for a bigger piece of the budgetary pie. Sure, you can engage in stretching heroics, but should you have to engage in those heroics day in and day out, for years on end? Hopefully not now, when ransomware is still all the rage and nation-state-sponsored attacks are becoming more legitimate business in many parts of the world.  

Timing is everything, however, and now – at the end of the year – would be the time to pull off some of those heroics and make your case for more budget. This will enable your exploration into a solution that can do more for less. InsightCloudSec from Rapid7 is a cloud risk and compliance management platform that enables organizations to securely accelerate cloud adoption with continuous security and compliance throughout the entire software development lifecycle (SDLC).

It provides a comprehensive solution to manage and mitigate risk across even the most complex cloud environments. The platform detects risk signals in real-time and in complete context, allowing your teams to focus on the issues that present the most risk to your business based on potential impact and likelihood of exploitation.

And speaking of making things easier

Whatever your ultimate cloud security needs are, you can now learn more about tactics to help you make your case for more – or any – cloud security at your company. Plus, get a handy checklist to use when looking into a potential solution. Get started now with the 2022 edition of The Complete Cloud Security Buyer’s Guide from Rapid7. You can also read the previous entry in this blog series here.