FinOps: the key to cloud security

The security of your cloud is at risk, warns Sheldon Lachambre  at DoiT, and FinOps will help you protect it

 

With public cloud spending expected to double over the next four years, maintaining cloud security has never been so important. As businesses continue to innovate, cloud models offer them the flexibility, scalability, and access to new services to support their growth. However, increased use of the cloud can also exacerbate the risk of cyber-attacks. 

 

Cloud cyber-attacks are becoming more aggressive as ‘bad actors’ harness new technologies, such as AI, for smarter attacks. And the cost of a cloud data breach can be enormous. Last year, the global average was almost five million dollars - and money talks.  This makes the cloud an inviting target, and with nearly half of all corporate data stored in the cloud being sensitive, it’s a business imperative to keep it secure.  

 

But where to begin? 

Paradoxically, the very characteristics that make the cloud so attractive – its scalability and flexibility – render it susceptible to security breaches. For example, the sheer diversity of providers in a multi-cloud environment means security is complex and hard to guarantee. 

 

Invariably, a business will invest in high-tech security software and a professional security team, but this is not the only option out there. Shifting to a FinOps mindset for cost efficiency can also bring significant benefits for cloud security. 

 

FinOps: a culture shift 

FinOps is a cultural practice designed to optimise cloud usage and associated costs. It provides a centralised set of ‘best practices’, helping teams manage their cloud resources efficiently. FinOps was initially developed as a cloud optimisation strategy, meaning its security benefits are often overlooked, undervalued, or ignored.

 

But unused and overprovisioned resources are a data breach waiting to happen. Left unmanaged, they increase the surface area exposed to cyber-attacks. By shutting down idle workloads to optimise cloud usage, businesses substantially reduce their exposure to cyber-risks.

 

Worryingly, The State of Human Risks confirms that human error is responsible for 95% of cloud security breaches, underlining the need for automation. FinOps allows businesses to minimise their security risks in multi-cloud environments by promoting automated governance and consistent configuration policies. This centralised approach ensures costly security gaps are closed before vulnerabilities become liabilities. 

 

A successful FinOps strategy depends on cross-team collaboration and breaking down organisational silos to manage costs and security in tandem. As such, a FinOps approach promotes collaboration between engineering, finance, and, increasingly, security teams. By fostering communication, teams can promptly address weaknesses. A holistic view of the cloud allows spending to be calibrated alongside compliance measures.

 

Furthermore, by combining FinOps with security monitoring tools, organisations can track financial and security risks in real time. Through shared alerts, teams can identify changes to spending patterns, such as unauthorised access or malicious activity. Unusual spikes are often indicators of data breaches. When FinOps and security teams collaborate, budget alerts become warning systems. These ensure teams can respond in that critical window before potential threats escalate. 

 

Alone, visibility is no longer enough

But visibility is not synonymous with security; a FinOps mindset can help shift the focus from merely identifying risks to proactively mitigating them. Organisations can gain valuable security insights by analysing their cloud usage patterns, as anomalies are often early indicators of security breaches. By using integrated cloud monitoring solutions that automatically highlight these anomalies, companies can react more quickly to potential risks. 

 

FinOps principles also promote a culture of accountability, which places security considerations at the heart of cloud architecture. Building this culture requires a top-down approach, with leadership — particularly CIOs and CISOs — driving change. Gartner predicts that by the end of the year, 99% of security failures will be the customer’s fault, due to misconfigurations or ignoring known but unremediated vulnerabilities. FinOps practices can change this. 

 

How to put this Into practice? 

The first step to turning insights into action is developing an overarching view of operations. Aligning teams keeps all processes transparent. This can be achieved by integrating cloud management tools with security monitoring solutions and encouraging company-wide communication. 

 

The next step would be to automate governance to check for cost and security risks. One way to do this is to use a single dashboard to display both security and cost analytics side by side. Centralising information helps to avoid miscommunication or information “blind spots” and committing to a standardised tagging system provides a common language for collaboration. 

 

To tie it all together, continuous optimisation and monitoring will ensure your cloud continues to be secure. Cloud management platforms (CMPs) and Kubernetes (K8s) management tools provide invaluable cloud configuration support insights, keeping both your cloud and your bottom line secure. 

 

Today, security posture has become almost as important as commercial health. Now that the cloud is entrenched in most business models, it requires a strategic policy adjustment to keep it secure and cost-effective. Thankfully, FinOps, once seen as a pure cost-saving exercise, can help do both. Adopting this approach could be the necessary reset for businesses to barricade themselves against the growing cyber-threat.  

 

Real-time visibility, better risk detection, and collaboration across teams are the pillars of a steadfast approach to governance. They enable organisations to make genuine trade-offs between performance, business outcomes, compliance, security, and cost – considering all the factors.

 

Adopting a FinOps approach requires a shift in mindset and a more holistic view of the opportunities and threats from advances in AI and cloud, to ensure a proactive stance  can be taken as the threat landscape continues to grow in complexity.  

 

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Sheldon Lachambre is Director of Engineering at DoiT

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and tadamichi