VPN-free

• It’s a fact. VPNs can’t effectively manage, authenticate, or secure remote devices. You may have a patch or new software ready to deploy, but if the user is not connected via a VPN, they’ll have to wait.

  With the cloud, relying on users to connect via a VPN is a non-issue. As long as an internet connection is available, you can easily manage all your endpoints scattered across a distributed workforce without on-prem hardware or VPNs.

Reduced complexity

• On-prem solutions also often require hardware at each location with constant versioning, maintenance to support updates, and bug fixes. This not only adds unnecessary costs but also compounds already complex environments and further frustrates IT.

  Instead of throwing dollars at on-prem solutions, IT teams can uncomplicate their environments with cloud-native solutions that don’t require on-prem maintenance, cost, or time sink.

Automation-friendly

• From onboarding and de-provisioning users to patching devices across your environments, automation holds the key to driving your dynamic cloud-based infrastructure forward. Automation has a single purpose: to perform repetitive, time-consuming, and monotonous tasks hands-free. The result is a more efficient, cost-effective, and productive cloud environment.

  Effective automation requires good data to work efficiently and effectively. The more data sources, the better the quality of operations. With the cloud, gathering data from all aspects of your environment is simplified vs. manually gathering and organizing data across on-prem sources (another reason to adopt the cloud).

Access controls for the cloud

• Implementing role-based access controls (RBAC) can quickly lock out unauthorized users, control access creep, and ensure users are only acting on the permissions they’ve been granted. By implementing RBAC across cloud boundaries, easily control user access and permissions across all of your endpoints and block-out bad actors.

Modern identity platforms

• Modern identity security platforms are built for the cloud and are collectively a far-cry from securing access within the traditional four-wall office. From a single-sign-on (SSO) that centralizes identity control and reduces password mismanagement to multi-factor authentication (MFA) that protects user access by validating identities through more than one method, one or both of these identity tools can elevate your cloud security.

Security automation

• Automation can do many things, from detecting potential threats, to containing and resolving them. Automated actions take seconds to execute and function largely without human intervention. Automation can reduce the noise significantly, improving your IT team’s productivity and responsiveness within the cloud.

Encryption

• The ease of moving and storing data is one of the key benefits of the cloud. However, data, whether in transit or stored, can be susceptible to bad actors accessing it. Thankfully, there’s encryption that can render data unreadable to unauthorized users.

  Deploying encryption, either through your cloud provider or a third-party vendor, can foil a bad actor’s tactics when trying to get to your data.

Cyber hygiene solutions

• And lastly, implementing and automating basic cyber hygiene consistently, from critical security patch deployments to software updates, is the most heavy-hitting step you can take to avoid breaches in the cloud.

  With healthy endpoint management practices in place, putting a stop to cyber exploits and remediating vulnerabilities is less intimidating and often accomplished in just a few clicks.