Hey, intelligent teams, you're well aware of how important DevSecOps is, it's a great goal. But, for various organizations, DevSecOps is no less than DevStopOps as the app development teams are running at a rapid pace to bring business-critical apps to users. making it more and more difficult for the security teams to figure out security and compliance gaps. The actual reason here is that the right, automated security policy is the missing element. In today's time of agility, various CEOs and security experts have spoken about security challenges, and CISOs face these challenges on a regular basis. A growing number of connected devices, lack of security skills, highly fragmented networks, and more are the common challenges. And, the biggest of all is thinking that security is a business blocker, it's a business enabler instead. Where is the problem? The process followed is where all the problems get started. It is a common process for app development to keep security at the end of the process. App designers design the app, develop it, and later, they think about all the security issues that they can come across. When we talk about the right coding process, security needs to be treated as an integral part of the process. The fact is, it's not only about the development process, if implementing the right security tools and segmentation takes a week, it is also a major issue in the security policy process.   Automation is the way to win If you want to fill the gap between security and agility, then automation is the way to win. Many businesses may already be using automation as an element of security but lack the visibility to create the right security policies. So, what's the first step that needs to be taken? Security teams must take inventory of the existing security policy, compare it with the current compliance requirements, and create a solid security policy that can be implemented across applications, devices, and networks. With the help of the right policy, security teams can easily figure out compliance and security issues. Needless to mention, teams also need to take quick actions to find who can get what kinds of access and application. The goal here is to automate the process so that the teams can make quick decisions. In today's time where network complexities have increased business attacks, manual security processes don't work anymore. Know the importance of working together This particular point has been raised by experts, it is highly important to work together. Security decision-makers across industries and smart people have raised the point that there is a need to constantly collaborate and bring the best solutions into the market. Of course, there are countless solutions available in the market that are trying to grab the attention of CISOs, these solutions are in an integrated fashion, all of them promising to bring the best outcomes for their customers.   Choosing the right automation tool for network security policy Here, let's take a look at what research has to say. 50% of the companies with 1000 or more employees use more than 20 cybersecurity tools, which adversely affects the ability of a business to manage and secure its network. Today, businesses are expected to meet the growing number of compliance, legal, and regulatory requirements, for security teams, a complex network makes meeting these requirements a time-consuming process. These challenges become more complex when an organization is utilizing various cybersecurity tools. All without compromising with agility, network security policy automation can help in dealing with these kinds of complexities. How does security policy automation help? When businesses are in a rapidly changing IT environment, attacks are growing rapidly. In this case, only balancing security and agility is something that's not enough. A business needs to improve both these areas without making any compromises. Corporate networks will continue to grow and there will be some complexities to manage, and this is where security policy automation can prove to be helpful. How to choose the right policy automation for your business? A few things that you need to keep in mind while choosing the network policy for your business include: Network topology awareness One of the most important components of any network security policy, network topology awareness needs to be on top of the priority list. Also, it is important to ensure that the tool must be able to understand your hybrid and complex network. If you want to make things automated in the right way, then this is an important point to consider. If your automation works only 50% of the time, then you can't trust the solution. If you want to ensure quick and very precise provisioning of new or changed access policies, then you can do this only with the help of accurate topology path calculations and policy analysis. The tool that you choose must be capable of delivering more accurate network security data and this is when you will be able to achieve it. Security policy generation and management should be automated For measuring the quality of security in any business, security policy works as a ruler. In the absence of the right security policy, it becomes very difficult to measure the level of security that is already in place in the business. Though thinking about the violations of your security policy in production is something you can do later. When the right practices are implemented, they encourage businesses to move in the right direction, security policy helps in bringing a change, the changes that are compliant and secure. When it comes to security policy creation, there are countless challenges that a business many need to face. Some of the businesses don't even have a central repository where all these policies can be stored and updated, some admins completely rely on spreadsheets or institutional knowledge that they have. These policies are needed to be changed as per the changes taking place in the business. In the absence of generic corporate policy, businesses don't have a policy on which they can rely or begin to create their own policy. The fact is, not all the policies and business needs are same, this is the reason why it can take months for a business to create and implement these policies. It becomes a lot more challenging when you are trying to apply consistent segmentation policies, all across the mix of security solutions. When you are trying to find the best policy automation solution for your business, make sure that the options that you are choosing should help you in automatically generating and maintaining accurate security policy across the hybrid environment, it needs to be the one that can be made an integral part of your change process. It's completely fine if your business has no solid policy before the automation process, the thing is your solution must be able to resolve this issue. Scaling ability Most of the businesses today are making use of hybrid network using IaaS and PaaS, needless to mention all the adoption of container-based development practices. This takes us to the third, and very important point, the tool must have the ability to scale. In the near future, the network and cloud environment may not be the same. The policy automation tool must be capable of expanding as per the growing needs of business.

Lower budgets and demand for high ROI- experts are expecting the cloud computing world to change by leaps and bounds in the next year. The dominating trends are expected to be planning and strategy, here, we're going to talk about what the next year has to offer... Experts don't really think that the next year will have more focus on zero-trust security or there will be any tactical shift in technology. It is expected to be a bigger fix or a strategic trend.  Instead of simply tossing technology and money at problems, this is probably something that's been a long time in coming. Going a few years back, the focus was completely on emerging patterns, but the thinking of experts got shifted by something- you can call it a global pandemic, making many businesses rush towards the newfound safety of public cloud providers. The rapid growth of could computing since the year 2019 says it all. Lift and shift to public cloud providers This extremely quick lift and shift to public cloud providers have come up with some issues that businesses are facing. It includes a lack of discipline and too many complexities, improper planning, and lesser ROI from cloud deployment. These are some of these issues that are probably going to be highlighted in the coming year, though they should be started years back. One of the most common issues that businesses are facing these days- there are too many cloud computing services that are required to be tracked and managed. This, in turn, again invites some complexities and the key reason is the rise of multi-cloud. There should be a purpose behind a business moving to multi-cloud, but when businesses look for the best could service without any plan for what needs to be done with these services after deployment causes troubles. This is where unnecessary cost gets involved and there are lesser returns, not a new story.   A couple of ways that can help in managing the cloud complexity issues include a better approach to managing these complexities and the strategic use of technology. A business needs to have a common layer of technology above any legacy or edge-based systems and also above the public cloud providers, and this will help in reducing redundancy.   There are some common services in this layer, a single cloud operations system, a single security system, a single data management system, finops, and more. A supercloud or metacloud, this technology needs to be there within a common layer. What does the strategic cloud trend do here? It helps in cutting down the cloud cost with the help of a common finops layer that takes care of cost monitoring, cost governance, as well as cloud cost optimization, and it also helps in solving all the possible complexities by leveraging common services and a common control plane. Once these couple of problems are resolved, this is sure to help in solving cloud cost problems and complexities, making the ROI fix itself. The business can expect better value as the cloud services and could applications that are being used for the last few years are expected to become more and more advanced and optimized. The change in the coming year is going to be more than just an argument on concepts, it's going to be about actual planning and execution. If you own a business and looking forward to going faster, you may need to opt for a slower pace initially. You can make a lot better and more strategic use of could technology once strategies, funding, and all your plans are in place. Expecting to see more companies shifting to multi-cloud As PR agencies are now pushing the predictions of their clients for the coming year and major cloud conferences are also taking place, we need to take a look at what experts have to say about the evolution of cloud computing in 2023. Experts are suggesting large cloud providers focus on multi-cloud for years, of course, this is probably a big step and is going to change the way how they market their technology.   Diluting the value of their specific technology, and adding some confusion to the market are a couple of reasons why businesses have not taken this step. On the other hand, small players are accepting this as an opportunity, they are making this move positively, one way or the other, and they are seeing multi-cloud as a clear advantage. The direction in which the cloud technology is moving is very clear, we're well into the reality of complex cloud deployments utilizing more than one cloud provider in most cases. Will the large cloud providers accept and promote multi-cloud technology? How are they going to provide this technology to businesses? It's all about focusing on development, and if you are among those who are doing it, you won't miss Kubernetes. Today, businesses are in favor of some kinds of container-based developments, and container orchestration in their specific cloud platforms. So, what is the missing part here? It's turnkey technology that takes care of the development and deployment of multi-cloud solutions. Or, you can call it distributed and heterogenous container orchestration the one that can deploy containerized applications across public cloud providers. Gone are the days when it was something new as there are available technologies that can deploy across traditional on-premises platforms as well as orchestrate containers across various cloud providers. One thing that can be expected to be new here is the support of multi-cloud container orchestration and the release of technology that simplifies building and deploying these systems with the help of native cloud services that run across cloud providers. It makes the business capable of finding best-of-breed solutions on different cloud providers while not being limited to deployment on a single cloud provider, the benefits are very easy to understand. ·       Businesses are accepting that multi-cloud is the most likely end state. Some businesses end up with multi-cloud for obvious reasons while others reach to it with the help of organic growth and by choosing different best-of-breed cloud services across cloud providers, and this can be called a tactical need of the business. ·       Large cloud providers are accepting the fact that they won't be able to market multi-cloud anymore. This is a part of the technological zeitgeist now, and avoiding it will likely backfire. ·       Developers are accepting the fact that expanding their deployment reach across clouds is an option that is capable of producing better applications that utilize exactly the same technology they need, regardless of the cloud it’s running on, keeping in mind that this can't be right for all kinds of applications. Final words Have you ever given thought to what will happen if this particular shift to multi-cloud container orchestration will become a reality in the coming year? It is a mere fact that businesses may need some time to realize the capabilities of this technology, and how they can make the best use of it. On the other hand, the time difference is huge between when technology providers announce something new, and when it becomes available and usable for businesses. Things are expected to move a little slower as we are dealing with the development and deployment of applications. Is it going to take a lot of time to become available? Is it worth the wait? There are many questions that are needed to be answered.

Thanks to the increasing demands and digitalization, the data center industry has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years. This has been forecasted by experts that the industry will reach $226 billion by the year 2022, and year-on-year growth is expected around 11%. However, this rapidly increasing demand is not the only challenge faced by data center operators. Data centers are moving towards sustainability, they are going green, and achieving these sustainability targets can prove to be difficult for businesses that are operating older data centers. So, if you are among them, and looking forward to making your data center more efficient and sustainable, then modernizing your legacy data center is the way you should choose. Why modernize your older/existing data center? If you are operating in an older data center for a long time, your business may need to deal with some unexpected challenges. Some of the common challenges include a lack of flexibility to meet rapid growth, inefficient cooling, lesser space to add more capacity, and many more. Such issues need to be addressed timely so that you can put your modernization efforts in the right direction. If increasing the capacity is the only goal you have, then all you need to do is add prefabricated modular data centers having one or more rows of racks grouped together with dedicated row-based cooling. You can have more energy-efficient and innovative systems when you are operating on the approach of scale as you grow. You can also choose to upgrade all the older physical infrastructure components including electrical distribution systems, and UPSs. Using the latest UPSs electrical distribution systems, you can be assured that you have a lesser cost of ownership, the lifespan is better than before, and you move towards sustainability. Think beyond hardware upgrades Data center modernization is more than just upgrading and/or replacing hardware. All the software and data maintenance solutions have also become highly advanced in the last few years, and data center managers need to assess them as well. With the help of digitally connected sensors, you can get the right information and insights regarding adaptability, efficiency, and how you can do optimization. If you want to implement digitalization, you can do it simply by retrofitting electrical systems with smart devices all connected with energy and power management. This will also help the entire data center team, it will enable monitoring of software to make use of this data and optimize performance, performing condition-based maintenance, and also keep track of energy consumption. It will help in eliminating unwanted service visits, save you crucial time, and extend the life of your data center. There's one more key advantage of this approach, businesses can upgrade the active components, of the current electrical equipment, and the modernization process will not cause any kind of material wastage. Finding the right data center partner  The right data center partner becomes more and more crucial to simplify your modernization journey. You need to collaborate with an experienced vendor to ensure that all your modernization goals are met. Connect with a company having in-depth knowledge and experience in working with the latest technology to help leverage digitalization and incorporate sustainable solutions. The right partner will provide you with the right insights regarding refurbishing, retrofitting, or replacing to meet all your business needs within the specified budget. A vendor can help you prepare for the future, can streamline the entire planning process, and help mitigate losses. Another important thing to keep in mind is that your vendor should also provide you with the support and guidance needed after the completion of the modernization project. Know these key tips for agile data center infrastructure Avoiding the need for data center modernization or not doing timely upgrades can prove to be risky for businesses. Data center modernization has become a key necessity, regardless of the location of the data center- in the cloud, on-premise, on the edge, or any other combination. To be more specific, the physical data center must adapt to the supported application portfolio. If you are not focusing on modernization, you are compromising with responsiveness and performance of the data center. While making some changes in the application, it is important to know that it will have a profound impact on the IT equipment required. Some key reasons behind the aging of data center physical infrastructure include the increasing use of GPUs as well as the Internet of Things (IoT). Increasing higher density computers and storage will need some modifications and redesigning to avoid downtime whereas power and cooling systems may still be functional. There can be an exponential workload increase on the data center infrastructure when real-time data is processed in large quantities. With this vast amount of data, IT and network administrators may need to face some new set of challenges. Prioritizing modernization Before you get started with modernization, it is advisable to start with the aspects that are going to affect reliability and performance the most. Modern data centers need to be highly available and should scale as per the requirements while providing powerful processing and AI capabilities, the entire focus needs to be on scalability, security, and visibility. You also need to ensure a cyber and physically secure environment, this can be achieved with the help of a technology ecosystem that will protect customer data. Software as a Service (SaaS) based asset management products can provide you with the required visibility. All the devices on the network can be easily seen by data center staff on their phones. There is a dashboard with the help of which administrators can dive into any device or alarm and also do any kind of required troubleshooting. Things to consider regarding power protection and redundancy  The highest level of availability is needed by servers and systems within a data center, this needs to be identified and configured to provide all the needed support for longer runtime, and a higher level of redundancy. Place them in separate racks and separate areas, it can help in increasing the availability of critical systems, the concept of targeted availability works really well and it's a cost-effective solution. You should consider two important aspects- precision cooling and density control, both Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies need compute power that produces concentrated heat, and precision air cooling devices should be in place. Don't forget about industry-specific needs IT is becoming increasingly important in a wide range of businesses and industries. hence, IT and data center staff need to be well aware of how general technology trends can have an impact on physical infrastructure, and also business-specific transformations. For instance, data centers have become the heart of the retail industry, they are capable of processing hundreds of thousands of orders that can come from the storefront, website warehouses, or any other place. Ultimately, they help in providing better customer experiences. Final words So, now that you are aware of the reasons to modernize your data center, data center modernization needs to be on top of your priority list. Connect with a highly experienced and reliable team to get all your data center modernization needs to be done as per your specific business needs.