Emerging technologies catch IT leaders flat-footed, so it comes as no surprise that some are clenching their teeth over shadow AI, or the unsanctioned use of generative AI and associated services.

CIOs recall when cloud computing disrupted the industry more than a decade ago. They remember business line leaders using corporate credit cards for cloud applications from startups.

Yet once IT leaders realized how much employees valued these tools they came around. They secured enterprise licenses, integrated the technologies with their existing IT systems and trained employees. IT leaders augmented productivity while preserving security.

With todays proliferation of genAI services democratizing AI, IT leaders are bracing for the growth of shadow AI.

Yet IT leaders should embrace and extend rather than hinder employees genAI experiences.

This would serve two desirable goals: help employees realize greater productivity and even augment the customer experience.

GenAI could help buoy profits by as much as $4.4 trillion by boosting productivity across customer operations, sales and marketing, software engineering, and research and development, according to McKinsey Digital.1

With genAI gaining traction, IT should learn what employees prefer to use, educate them on how to use them responsibly and institute guardrails. This might help IT garner goodwill with the business, with which it may be at oddseven today.

Consider that while more than half of IT decision makers want a stronger relationship with their business peers, 81% of business decision makers exclude their IT peers from strategic decision-making, according to new Dell research.2 Lack of trust is typically the key sticking point.

Yet IT leaders can take lessons from their past experiences with shadow IT to build a bridge between employees and genAI that cultivates trust unleashes innovation. These tips can point the way.

Some IT leaders first instinct is to create or at least command every technology solution. Instead, IT leaders should learn and understand how employees consume genAI to assist their work.

IT leaders must then work with the C-suite to build consensus around how to use genAI to accelerate the business but balance such efforts with risk mitigation, as McKinsey noted.

Leadership will communicate this messaging to the rank-and-file early and often.

When its time to engage with a vendor or build a solution, IT leaders can position themselves as innovators by executing with a product management mindset that aligns agile development practices with business goals.

CIOs can use this approach to ensure that their technology solutions directly contribute to the organizations objectives, said CIO-turned-investor Yousuf Khan.

GenAI is new enough that most employees dont yet know how to use it and most companies arent helping. Only 6% of companies have trained more than 25% of their people on genAI tools, according to a Boston Consulting Group survey of C-suite executives.3

Organizations must tailor education, training and tools for employees in technical and nontechnical roles.

Accenture plans to train 250,000 employees on how to use genAI services responsibly, said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet at the recent World Economic Forum. This is basic digital literacy to run a company and to be good, Sweet said.

The stakes are high for such literacy. As much as 40% of current job roles will be redefined or eliminated across large enterprises due to genAI adoption, according to IDC research commissioned by Dell.4

From a risk perspective, genAI is like Jurassic Parkchaotic. GenAI services are black boxes; no one knows how they arrive at their conclusions. They may hallucinate and spew false information. Comprised or inaccurate content can put businesses reputationor worseat risk.

This makes risk mitigation critical. Most companies will track and assess AI for risk and apply mitigation strategies as needed over the next 12 to 24 months, Accentures Sweet predicted.

That timeline feels long. Organizations adopting genAI should institute governance and security models today, ideally taking a Zero Trust approach, to keep the organization safe and secure.

Falling back on the classic command-and-control stance is instinctive for IT leaders, but genAI is too easy to use and easily accessible for most employees.

Instead, IT leaders should work with their business peers on responsible use, adopt and/or build safe and vetted technologies, and educate and communicate to the rank-and-file how to consume them.

Trusted partners can help, providing the hardware, software and services to help organizations bring AI to their data in a way that respects IT governance while democratizing employee access to genAI services.

Learn more at dell.com/ai.

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Embracing shadow AI will help accelerate innovation - CIO

Organizations continue to grow more distributed, virtual and complex. Over the last several years, they have sped up digital transformation projects, leaning hard into hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. This rapid movement comes with a price, however. Too many organizations lack the in-house cloud security expertise and resources needed to protect cloud assets effectively.

One option to address these challenges is managed cloud security. Outsourcing cloud security to a third party not only helps organizations with limited cloud security resources manage risks in the cloud, but it can, in some cases, save budget and free in-house security teams to focus on other pressing issues.

Let's look at the challenges of managing cloud security and the benefits and challenges of using managed cloud security services.

The cloud introduces several new security issues organizations must contend with. Security teams struggle to detect and remediate cloud security threats, with 90% of the organizations surveyed in Palo Alto Networks' "The State of Cloud-Native Security Report 2023" admitting they can't identify and mitigate cyberthreats within an hour.

In addition, too many organizations deploy cloud applications too quickly. This can equate to limited testing time and DevOps teams deploying code with gaping security holes. Developers are also tapping commercial off-the-shelf software to accelerate deployment times -- some of which don't have the best security measures. An application's security is at risk if it has any vulnerabilities in the development software.

Organizations also struggle with the number of tools needed to manage cloud security. The Palo Alto Networks survey found teams use more than 30 discrete security tools, of which six to 10 are for cloud security. Plus, 75% said the large number of separate tools makes it difficult to get an accurate view of the cloud environment. They said, in this scenario, it is challenging to gauge where the most significant risks are and how to remediate them.

Lastly, cloud providers apply a shared responsibility model to security. IaaS providers are primarily responsible for infrastructure security, while the client is on the hook for securing the workloads running in the environment. Client cloud operations teams sometimes need help understanding where their obligations begin and end.

Managed cloud security delivers many of the same benefits as outsourcing on-premises security. It can provide advanced threat intelligence and threat hunting capabilities, backed by the support of threat researchers and sophisticated tools, to expedite and improve threat identification. These services can also help organizations prioritize alerts and contain threats.

The best managed cloud security providers are trusted partners that can deliver innovative and effective technology, while alleviating the headaches associated with collating data from disparate tools. Managed cloud security services can also give organizations access to cloud-specific expert resources and partners with experience navigating evolving regulatory environments.

Outsourcing cloud security can also be more cost-effective than handling everything in-house; consolidating security operations under a third party can lower some operating expenses.

Managed cloud security isn't perfect. Suppose the service only provides cloud security for one environment. The client's IT team must integrate data from the cloud security services with its other security resources, adding complexity to security management.

There is also always a risk the external provider and its partners could expose the client's cloud environment to new risks. This fear of loss of control keeps many organizations from adopting managed cloud security services.

Finally, using third-party cloud security services -- depending on the circumstances -- could prove more expensive than managing these protections internally.

Many cloud security suppliers are available. All hyperscalers and cloud providers offer security controls as part of their IaaS and SaaS offerings, often for free. However, apart from Microsoft, which offers a full slate of managed cloud security services, most are discrete tools focusing on a single security aspect rather than providing a complete end-to-end perspective on the cloud environment. These primarily concentrate on security within their cloud, which complicates the security situation for organizations with hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

On the other hand, all major managed security service providers (MSSPs) offer cloud security services, as do many vendors that opt for a security-as-a-service model. MSSPs often provide security across cloud and hybrid environments. Most of their services are delivered via the cloud, translating to more rapid deployment. They can also mask much of the complexity associated with cloud security management, making it easier for internal security teams to tackle challenges as they arise.

One crucial aspect to consider is how cloud security fits into an organization's broader security strategy. It is essential to see the security perspective across the entire enterprise IT estate, including hybrid and multi-cloud. Tools such as extended detection and response offer protection from the customer premises to the cloud. These products amalgamate the tools that track, analyze and orchestrate responses across endpoints, infrastructure, workloads, networks and the cloud.

Cloud security services are available for organizations of all sizes, but under-resourced smaller and midsize organizations typically benefit the most. Finding the right provider comes down to trust -- and a proven track record. Cloud security providers should be able to demonstrate effectiveness in production cloud environments with customer testimonials. They must have integrations with all the hyperscalers and major cloud providers. It is also essential that cloud security services can integrate with any on-premises security infrastructure for more holistic management.

Amy Larsen DeCarlo has covered the IT industry for more than 30 years, as a journalist, editor and analyst. As a principal analyst at GlobalData, she covers managed security and cloud services.

Link:
Benefits and challenges of managed cloud security services - TechTarget

The explosive growth of the SaaS market is enabling new heights of enterprise productivity.

As spending on SaaS applications grows by 18% annually, projected by Gartner to hit $232.3 billion in 2024, enterprise operations are being redefined, especially with the sensitive data moving into cloud-based SaaS services.

These trends are challenging CISOs with the need to devise a new security posture strategy.

However, organizations can only protect the data in view. Today, security teams lack visibility into the SaaS stack, which is becoming an expanding attack surface where threat actors are targeting security gaps.

SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM) has emerged as the solution that can provide the correct security lens into the SaaS environment to ensure a robust security posture.

This article takes a look at how a $10B revenue enterprise adopted an SSPM solution to regain security control of its SaaS stack and improve its security posture. A Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact (TEI) study, commissioned by the leader in SaaS Security, Adaptive Shield, found the investment delivered the enterprise 201% ROI in less than 6 months.

Lets zoom into the case study of a $10B annual revenue European-headquartered global media and information services enterprise organization where data security was set as a top priority in response to breaches and highly inefficient workloads and workflows.

Growing SaaS adoption for business-critical applications across the organization was challenging the security team. The company experienced six internal security breaches in one year that were attributed to SaaS app usage.

Since security managers had limited knowledge of each application, typically managed by different owners outside of IT or security teams, this left security teams with limited visibility into the applications security settings. App owners were neither educated nor equipped enough to exercise security, making it impractical for business teams to secure their ecosystem.

The security team was also investing 2400 hours a year in manual processes to implement compliance rules.

The company CSO realized it was time to automate SaaS security efforts, choosing the Adaptive Shield solution considering that it supported the industrys widest portfolio of SaaS integrations.

With the SSPM solution, the company experienced quick improvement in its SaaS security posture. During the Proof of Concept, the security team found issues in SaaS configurations and fixed them.

Before the POC, the companys SaaS security posture was 40%. In the first six months, the organization experienced rapid improvement, with the score reaching 70% by the end of the year.

An immediate benefit was a reduction in data breaches, dropping half in the second year and projected to be one or fewer the third year. An additional benefit was a 90% savings in labor efforts managing the firms compliance goals, with time spent decreasing to 240 hours per year.

As a cloud-first strategy creates a proliferation of SaaS applications, this case study demonstrates how organizations are successfully updating their cybersecurity strategy to continue to fulfill responsibilities to ensure that all data is secure wherever it is stored.

Learn more about how a $10B enterprise improved security posture with an SSPM and achieved a 201% ROI

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How a $10 billion media enterprise significantly increased SaaS security, yielding a 201% ROI - SC Media

CXOToday has engaged in exclusive interview with John Dumalac, Global Sales VP of Distributed Cloud Services at F5

Applications are at the heart of all digital experiences, and when theyre secure, they unlock value and potential. But just as apps have become critical for life online, theyve also become harder to protect. Todays apps are built on multiple architectures, distributed over various cloud environments, and connected by an exploding number of APIs. According to Deloittes most recent research, SMBs that use the cloud grow 26% quicker and are 21% more lucrative, while businesses praise the clouds resilience, agility, flexibility, and scalability. However, cloud security concerns continue to prevent organizations from fully adopting the cloud, resulting in reduced cloud ROI. Below are some of the hybrid and multi-cloud challenges that businesses face:

At F5, we understand these challenges and strive to help our customers simplify hybrid and multi-cloud environments. We make it easy to deploy and maintain applications and APIs faster, smarter, and more cost-effectively using automation and advanced deployment techniques such as dynamic security policies and API discovery. We also bring distributed ecosystems into focus with a single SaaS-based management console, robust troubleshooting tools, and insights from application behavior. With F5, customers can maximize app performance and reduce security headacheseverywhere their apps are deployed.

Distributed cloud computing decentralizes resources to improve closeness to data sources, addressing difficulties that centralized models ignore. It offers benefits like data localization, decreased latency, greater performance, cost-effectiveness, and a better user experience. According to SlashData, 55% of global developers are already using the distributed cloud approach in some form for their work.

And to strengthen organizations in this digital world, where organizations are adopting a distributed cloud approach, we brought forth our F5 Distributed Cloud Services. These are SaaS-based security, networking, and application management services that enable customers to deploy, secure, and operate their applications in a cloud-native environment wherever neededdata center, multi-cloud, or the network or enterprise edge.

Through F5s Distributed Cloud Platform, we provide flexibility as these services are centrally managed but can be deployed anywhere the app needs to be to maximize business impact and deliver a superior customer experience. We also enable our customers to automate application deployment, scaling, security, secrets/keys, and operations, as the control plane removes the overhead of managing individual Kubernetes clusters. In addition, it also provides complete infrastructure management for heterogeneous cloud and edge environments.

F5 Distributed Cloud Platform provides SaaS-based security, networking, and application management approach, providing businesses with a lot of advantages. The F5 Distributed Cloud Platform allows businesses to gain scalability and flexibility while lowering infrastructure costs and ensuring global reach for continuous service delivery. Businesses can streamline operations and focus on key skills by automating updates and maintenance, implementing strong security measures, and providing a unified administration interface. Integration capabilities and performance optimization improves the overall effectiveness of managing and safeguarding applications and makes F5 Distributed Cloud Services an attractive option for enterprises looking for a modern, cloud-centric approach to their IT infrastructure requirements.

India is a significant market for F5, and we have a base of 5000+ customers. Operating for more than two decades in the country, F5 has its largest R&D center in Hyderabad, with people working towards new developments and innovations. In India, we have a robust partner ecosystem consisting of distributors, resellers, and system integrators. Along with this, we also have a dedicated team that manages our channel partner network and drives growth in the region.

Our focus in India has been on application security and cloud-based services, resulting in the expansion of our operations. F5 products and solutions are widely used in various industries such as banking, financial services, insurance, telecom, etc. To cater to the specific needs of the Indian market, we are committed to investing in the region to expand our channel partner network and drive growth. The new excellence center in Bengaluru, an extension of our current R&D center in Hyderabad, supports our ambition to become a global leader in multi-cloud application services. The center will play a critical role in driving research, development and product innovation for F5 as the company expands its portfolio of multi-cloud application security and delivery solutions.

India is one of the worlds largest and fastest-growing digital consumer marketplaces, according to Nielsens India Internet Report 2023, India already had over 700 million active internet users by Dec 2022. As digital capabilities increase and connectivity becomes more widespread, technology is poised to rapidly alter every area of Indias economy. This is anticipated to provide enormous economic value while also changing the nature of labor for Indians. The public and private sectors are driving digital consumption growth. The government has recruited over 1.2 billion Indians in its biometric digital identity program. Aadhaar has brought over 10 million enterprises onto a digital platform through a goods and services tax. Digital applications are expected to proliferate across most sectors of Indias economy. Core digital sectors such as IT and business process management, digital communication services, and electronics manufacturing could double their GDP level to $355 billion to $435 billion by 2025. According to a report by McKinsey Global Institute on Digital India Sectors such as agriculture, education, energy, financial services, healthcare, logistics, and retail, as well as government services and labor markets could create $10 billion to $150 billion incremental economic value in 2025.

The coming years will definitely witness the Indian era when it comes to digital growth and we at F5 are working towards being a part of this by helping businesses leverage the digital developments in India.

The ever-evolving world of technology has an immense impact on businesses, modifying how they operate, develop, and remain competitive. In recent years significant trends have evolved, influencing multiple facets of the business ecosystem. Businesses are traversing a changing technical terrain that includes the integration of artificial intelligence and edge computing, developments in cybersecurity operations, and the growing relevance of API Security. Telemetry, cloud-native technologies, 5G, and robotic process automation all play an important role in the industrys pursuit of sustainability, connection, and efficiency. Below are some more technology trends that businesses must look out for:

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Navigating the Cloud: Challenges and Solutions for Businesses in a Multi-Cloud Era - CXOToday.com

In today's dynamic business environment, the shift to cloud operations is more crucial than ever. As organisations transition, the need to scale securely and efficiently takes centre stage. This article unveils the secrets to mastering cloud strategies and navigating the contemporary organisational landscape.

These findings shed light on the evolving landscape of cloud adoption, showcasing the enduring popularity of hybrid and multi-cloud strategies among organisations.

In the ever-evolving realm of cloud computing, enterprises are expanding their horizons beyond in-house data centres, embracing strategic approaches such as multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and colocation solutions. Let's unravel the distinctions and explore the latest trends shaping the diverse landscape of cloud computing strategies.

Example: In hybrid and multi-cloud environments, the integration of edge computing is revolutionising real-time data processing. For instance, a retail company employs edge computing to analyse customer behaviour data instantly, enhancing personalised shopping experiences.

Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud are enduring enterprise solution strategies integral to a comprehensive hybrid IT approach. Both terms are anticipated to remain relevant in the long term. While cloud services offer numerous advantages, they also pose distinctive challenges. IT leaders need to establish a robust IT automation strategy to effectively manage the chosen solution. Furthermore, a thorough assessment of enterprise transformations is essential, as the adoption of new technology introduces potential new threats and challenges.

Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud solutions are cornerstones of modern enterprise IT. As you navigate the complexities of cloud adoption, it's also crucial to align your strategy with your unique organisational needs and goals.

By weighing up your unique needs, you can narrow down your choice of multi or hybrid cloud. The perfect type of cloud service is one that delivers the resources you need, protects your assets, and fits your requirements.

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The Rise of Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Computing Architecture - NEXTDC