BrandPost: 4 Risks of Waiting to Migrate to the Cloud

If you’re responsible for the security of your organization’s digital environment, staying up-to-date with the latest hardware, environment, and software vulnerability patches can be a challenge. Migrating your workloads to the cloud can help address these challenges in new, unique ways. Waiting to migrate to the cloud can create unforeseen consequences. Here are four risks of waiting to migrate to the cloud and how CIS resources can help mitigate them. 

  1. Lack of independent security configurations

By leveraging virtual machines (VMs) in the cloud, systems admins and CISOs can deploy a single image across multiple workstations. Starting with a base image is an option, but base images lack vendor-agnostic security configurations.

Administrators can feel confident using CIS Hardened Images. These images conform to recommended cybersecurity best practices of the CIS Benchmarks. As the only set of consensus-based, independent security configuration guidelines both developed and accepted by government, business, industry, and academia, CIS Benchmarks are a trusted standard. In addition, the CIS Benchmarks are recognized by DoD Cloud Computing SRG, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and other standards as a secure configuration standard.

  1. Hardware purchases and software licenses

Frequent hardware purchases, overtime for your IT department, and annual software license fees; that’s what the upkeep of an on-premises environment looks like. With securely pre-configured VMs in the cloud, you avoid hardware purchasing, configuration maintenance, and software licensing. For $0.02 per compute hour your organization can be up and running in minutes on CIS Hardened Images. This can be a major time and expense savings compared to on-prem. 

  1. On-premise = rigid infrastructure

Most organizations need to work in an environment that can handle increased growth with ease. If you operate on-prem, you have to take the time to manually harden each workstation with the same configurations. Scaling those workloads is an entirely separate set of struggles.

Cloud computing is renowned for its flexibility and scalable nature. Plus, if your organization chooses CIS Hardened Images, each VM launches secure from the start. Whether you’re looking to increase the memory of a single computer system or compute power of a larger network of machines, CIS Hardened Images make it easy to secure your entire cloud infrastructure.

  1. Rushing to configure your cloud environment

Learning that you need to migrate to the cloud quickly is stressful enough. Then, add the pressure to securely configure your cloud while rushing to meet deadlines for the migration project. Something is bound to break.

CIS Hardened Images include reports showing conformance to the applicable CIS Benchmarks, as well as any recommendations that aren’t applicable in the cloud. This means you and your team can quickly deploy CIS Hardened Images with confidence knowing that your machines are securely configured and safe from a variety of cyber threats.

A global security movement

Because they are based on the comprehensive consensus-developed CIS Benchmarks, CIS Hardened Images provide robust security for cloud environments. It’s never been easier to implement secure configurations as part of your cyber defense program. Want to learn more? Hear first-hand from users of CIS Hardened Images.

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