Survey Surfaces Raft of Cloud Native Application Security Challenges

Venafi, a unit of CyberArk, today published a survey of 800 security and IT decision-makers in the U.S. and Europe finds 86% of respondents work for organizations that have experienced a security incident involving their cloud-native application environment within the last year.

In addition, the survey finds more than half of organizations (53%) had to delay an application launch or experienced increased application development costs, as a result. Nearly half (45%) suffered outages or disruption to their application service.

Step 1 of 7

14%

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

Δ

Just under a third (30%) also discovered that cybercriminals had successfully gained unauthorized access to their sensitive data and systems. At the same time, 29% experienced compliance violations and audit failures.

Well over half (56%) report there was a cybersecurity incident involving the accounts provided to access services, followed by incidents involving certificates (53%), secrets (48%), containers (40%) and microservices (39%).

Sitaram Iyer, vice president for emerging technologies and global architects for Venafi, said that the level of activity aimed at service accounts suggests organizations need to be more vigilant when it comes to securing machine identities and individual software components. Unfortunately, too many organizations are only focused on securing the identity of developers rather than the entire software supply chain, he added.

Overall, the survey finds that 99% of respondents reported their organization’s increased usage of services in the last year, with 87% describing that increase as a surge.

While 91% of respondents still believe service accounts help define and enforce consistent policies across their cloud-native environments, a full 88% are aware that access tokens and service accounts as prime targets for cyber attackers, and 84% identify managing service accounts as a growing challenge. More than two-thirds (68%) worry that their development teams don’t fully grasp how crucial it is to secure these access tokens.

A full 88% said machine identities deserve the same level of attention as human identities, with 83% noting that failing to fortify operations at the workload level makes all other security measures obsolete. A full 94% said workload identities also need to be consistent, secure, short-lived and thoroughly vetted.

Nearly three-quarters (74%) said that through careful management of workload identities, they may be able to eventually eliminate the need for passwords. That’s crucial, because 89% of respondents said their organization is experiencing challenges with managing application secrets, with the cost and complexity of key vaults (51%) and unsecured storage access (41%) topping the list of concerns.

On the plus side, 47% have put measures in place to better secure credentials, while 45% have adopted a framework of security standards and control and 43% have defined and enforced comprehensive security policies throughout their build and delivery pipelines

Nevertheless, just over half of respondents (52%) work for organizations that lack a unified approach or have reached a consensus on how to effectively embrace a DevSecOps strategy. More than two-thirds (68%) said security professionals and developers will always be at odds, with more than half (54%) feeling they’re fighting a losing battle trying to instill a security-first mindset among developers. A total of 61% said senior managers have taken their eye off the software supply chain security ball in the past year.

A full 84% said software supply chain attacks continue to be a clear and present danger, with vulnerabilities (81%), poor testing coverage (66%) and improper version controls (65%) being their top concerns. More than three-quarters (77%) also noted that poisoning attacks aimed at artificial intelligence (AI) platforms will become a new type of software supply chain attack.

In general, security concerns are driving many organizations to move some workloads to an on-premises IT environment. A full 59% have shifted cloud-native applications from the public cloud to an on-premises data center, with 71% citing data security as a key concern, followed by data sovereignty (51%), regulatory requirements (44%), cost (43%) and performance issues (43%) as reasons for migrating. However, 80% have faced security and operational challenges, including misconfigurations that create vulnerabilities, patching difficulties, struggles with governance compliance, certificate-related outages and audit failures.

Nearly three-quarters (73%) report their organization now runs cloud-native applications in both public clouds and on-premises data centers, with 69% noting that delivering secure access between their cloud-native and data center environments is a “nightmare to manage.”

Despite that issue, 54% said cloud-related expenses have caused their organization to consider abandoning the cloud. A full 91% said they believe that platform teams could be the key to bridging the gap between security and development. That approach creates an opportunity to centralize the management of DevSecOps workflows, noted Iyer.

There can be little doubt that cloud-native security spanning highly distributed computing environments made up of microservices, Kubernetes clusters and service meshes is going to be more challenging to secure. The challenge now is finding a way to overcome the same DevSecOps issues that have always plagued software engineering in a cloud-native application era, where the building and deploying of software is more complex than ever.