{"id":54297,"date":"2023-10-25T15:39:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-25T15:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/article\/3709054\/infrastructure-teams-need-multi-cloud-networking-and-security-guardrails.html#tk.rss_security"},"modified":"2023-10-25T15:39:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-25T15:39:00","slug":"infrastructure-teams-need-multi-cloud-networking-and-security-guardrails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.threatshub.org\/blog\/infrastructure-teams-need-multi-cloud-networking-and-security-guardrails\/","title":{"rendered":"Infrastructure teams need multi-cloud networking and security guardrails"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Public cloud migration long ago wrested control over digital infrastructure from network and security teams, but now is the time for those groups to retake the initiative. Cloud operations and DevOps groups will never cede ground, but they will welcome self-service networking and security solutions that provide guardrails that protect them from disaster. Cooperation between traditional infrastructure teams and cloud teams is even more important as enterprises embrace multi-cloud architecture<\/a>, where complexity and risk are increasing. In fact, my research has found that security risk, collaboration problems, and complexity are the top pain points associated with multi-cloud networking today.<\/p>\n

Now is the time for cloud guardrails, because disasters are happening regularly. One network architect told me that his company\u2019s DevOps team moved a critical ecommerce application into the public cloud, but they ignored his advice on PCI DSS compliance. Because of this, the migration ultimately failed. A network engineer told me that he can\u2019t properly manage capacity on his company\u2019s direct connections from his data centers into multiple cloud providers because his cloud teams refuse to give him any visibility<\/a>. When cloud traffic spikes, he has no warning. This hampers his ability to proactively provision more bandwidth when cloud application usage trends upward.<\/p>\n

Provide cloud guardrails, not speedbumps<\/h2>\n

Network engineers and architects often tell me that their cloud and DevOps counterparts resist or ignore their efforts to impose architectural rigor in the public cloud. Cloud and DevOps teams believe that networking and security groups are too old-fashioned and get in the way of cloud-driven innovation. These infrastructure folks slow things down at a time when cloud and DevOps want to fail fast and iterate.<\/p>\n

However, times are changing. With multi-cloud complexity mounting, some network infrastructure pros tell me that they\u2019ve devoted significant time and resources over the last couple years to installing cloud guardrails. Often this involves stepping away from the networking solutions offered by individual cloud providers and adopting a cloud networking solution that works consistently across multiple cloud providers. Network and security teams can define guardrails in these multi-cloud networking solutions and allow cloud and DevOps teams to build and manage networks within them.<\/p>\n

The key is to ensure that the technology implemented is actually providing a guardrail and not imposing a speedbump or roadblock. Network and security teams need to provide infrastructure and services that are programmatic and easy to use. For instance, DevOps should be able to request IP addresses, spin up secure DNS<\/a> services, request changes to firewall policies, or adjust transit routing with a couple clicks. If approvals are required from network and security teams, those approvals should be automated as much as possible.<\/p>\n

This drive toward programmatic services is apparent in my research at Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). For instance, I recently surveyed 351 IT professionals about their multi-cloud networking strategies for the report \u201cMulti-Cloud Networking: Connecting and Securing the Future.\u201d (Check out EMA\u2019s free webinar<\/a> to learn more about what we found in that research). In that report, 82% of respondents told us that it was at least somewhat important for their multi-cloud networking solutions to have open APIs. More than 60% said they used these APIs to integrate their multi-cloud networking solutions with IT service management (ITSM) platforms. This integration enables automation of network change tickets, which removes speedbumps. Also, 52% use these APIs to directly enable cloud orchestration and automation tools for true self-service networking and security.<\/p>\n