Are You Cloud Ready? Q & A on functionality and connectivity
Note: This is the second in a multi-part blog series on Cloud Ready security questions. You can follow the entire Security Questions series here, and follow the Barracuda Cloud Ready blog here.
Earlier this week we announced an expansion to Barracuda’s Cloud Ready program, which offers organizations a simple path for moving workloads and applications to the public cloud all while remaining secure. Security is one of the most common challenges businesses face during a cloud migration because legacy on-premises solutions typically aren’t fit to extend to the public cloud. And unfortunately, not being able to bridge the gap between current on-premises technologies and the public cloud could be a costly mistake — especially in an age where cyber criminals are looking for any and all vulnerabilities to exploit.
Along with the Cloud Ready program, we have put together a series of questions to help you determine if your current security vendors are up to the task of securing your applications, workloads, and data in the public cloud. You can find the full list of questions here.
And to provide a little more context on how these questions will help you determine if your current vendors are “cloud ready”, we’ll address the most pressing ones in this series — let’s start with number two and seven on the list:
2. Does the solution provide the same functionality in the public cloud as it does for on-premises deployments?
While cloud security might require less management than on-premises infrastructure, customers are still responsible for what they put in the cloud — meaning they will still need to monitor traffic and understand what’s going on in their cloud network to keep it secure. Sometimes it’s inevitable that a company will elect to deploy a cloud security solution from a different vendor than what is being used in their on-premises network because certain solutions aren’t well architected for the public cloud. The downside to this is that the customer is then faced with managing two separate tools in a hybrid environment (part cloud, part on-premises). However, some customers prefer to standardize with vendors who allow them to extend the same on-premises protection to a cloud deployment. Not only does this simplify management, but it’s a logical solution to a world where hybrid networks are likely to be the dominant architecture. This is the approach Barracuda has taken, where our NextGen Firewalls and Web Application Firewalls are virtually the same whether they are deployed on-premises or in the cloud.
7. Can the solution intelligently secure and optimize traffic between your on-premises and cloud networks in a hybrid environment?
The hybrid environment is expected to be the dominant architecture for the foreseeable future. This is because it takes time and planning to migrate on-premises workloads to the cloud, and because some of the older legacy solutions simply don’t lend themselves to the cloud. Additionally, most customers don’t start out in the cloud, but rather begin by moving on-premises applications and workloads there when the time is right for them. Barracuda’s Cloud Ready program helps simplify this by providing free 90-day licenses for both the Barracuda NextGen Firewall and Web Application Firewall. Because customers are responsible for securing what they put in the cloud, setting up their cloud security environment first makes it much easier to successfully leverage the cloud.
[clickToTweet tweet="The hybrid environment is expected to be the dominant architecture for the foreseeable future. #cloud" quote="The hybrid environment is expected to be the dominant architecture for the foreseeable future."]
We hope this helps shed a little light on the importance of matching your on-premises functionality with what’s running in the cloud, and the possibility of optimizing traffic in a hybrid scenario. Please remember to stay tuned next week, as we’ll continue to address these questions throughout the series.
In the meantime, here are some resources to help you learn more about how Barracuda is helping customers address cloud security challenges.
Related Posts:
- Are You Cloud Ready? The Top Questions to Ask Your Security Vendor
- Good Read: “Deploying and Managing Security in the Cloud” – an Osterman Research White Paper
[pdf-embedder url="/content/dam/barracuda-blog/images/2017/05/Osterman_Research_-Deploying_Managing_Security_Cloud.pdf" title="Osterman_Research_ Deploying_Managing_Security_Cloud"]
Note: This is the second in a multi-part blog series on Cloud Ready security questions. You can follow the entire Security Questions series here, and follow the Barracuda Cloud Ready blog here.
Rich Turner - Rich is a Product Marketing Manager with Barracuda. He is currently leading Public Cloud marketing (AWS and Azure) where Barracuda has become Microsoft's #1 ISV and our revenues are growing at 400+%. His Barracuda blog is here.If you'd like to get in touch with Rich, you can connect with him on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter.
Subscribe to the Barracuda Blog.
Sign up to receive threat spotlights, industry commentary, and more.
