Cloud is transforming businesses across the region – but the right security controls are critical when considering cloud migration.
Organisations across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are embracing cloud solutions at pace, attracted by the cloud's agility, scalability, and cost efficiency. According to the Cloud Computing in the Middle East survey by PwC Middle East and Strategy&, 68 percent of Middle East companies plan to migrate a majority of their operations to the cloud within the next two years. According to forecast by Gartner, it is estimated that worldwide public cloud end-user spending would reach nearly US$600 billion in 2023.
Organisations understand that cloud adoption is the key to their future. However, many remain hesitant about taking the leap. When clients talk about their plans for cloud migration, they frequently raise the same concerns – they don’t have the range of skills needed to migrate successfully to the cloud, and they want to be sure that data security is as strong as possible.
It is reassuring to know that security is a major priority in cloud adoption. Our latest 2024 Global Digital Trust Insights reveal that both globally and regionally, mega breaches are increasing in both number and costs. Globally,the percentage of organisations reporting costs of $1 million or more for their worst breach in the past three years rose to 36% from 27% last year. The corresponding number this year for organisations in the Middle East is 29%. Although cloud attacks are the top cyber concern, about one-third of organisations have no risk management plan to manage and mitigate any risks of moving to the cloud.
In response to this growing threat, GCC governments have updated data protection and privacy regulations (including the Personal Data Protection Law in Saudi Arabia and the Data Privacy Protection Regulation in Kuwait), increasing the compliance burden on companies. It is likely that data privacy and security regulations will continue to evolve and tighten, which is likely to increase the challenge of keeping pace with compliance obligations.
Security from day one
If an organisation is to move successfully and securely to the cloud, security should be a priority from day one. Embedding the right security and controls into the system at the beginning is by far the most effective option – securing the cloud environment retrospectively after migration is more difficult, costly, and risky.
Organisations need to ensure that the right security requirements and controls are identified at the start of the planning process, and security and technical teams collaborate from the earliest stages. This creates a structured path for delivering security natively, where controls are embedded in templates and can be automated for consistency across the enterprise.
Organisations can redirect their cloud strategy from a purely technical focus to one that puts the needs of the business first. They can evaluate cloud providers to find the right fit, mitigate risks associated with cloud adoption, and develop a multi-year roadmap spanning financial, technical and security domains.
Efficient, secure migration
This approach to cloud migration is reflected in the robust innovations developed by AWS, which are helping organisations worldwide migrate to the cloud quickly, effectively and safely.
A recent solution is the Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS, a foundational infrastructure that provides an architectural framework for adhering to AWS security design principles and best practices in a shared security model. It deploys a secure, resilient and highly scalable cloud foundation architecture. While it does not represent AWS’ complete security posture in the cloud, it effectively streamlines and speeds up the process of setting up a cloud environment – one that is reliable, secure, based on best practices and that is in conformance with multiple global compliance frameworks.
“With Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS, customers can automatically set up a cloud environment suitable for hosting secure workloads,” said Ahmed Abdel Hamid, Security and Compliance Regional Leader, MEA, at AWS. “They can deploy this solution in all AWS Regions. Customers can deploy the solution in an AWS region suitable for their data classification, while leveraging a foundational infrastructure for deploying mission-critical workloads across a centrally-governed multi-account environment,” he added.
The Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS is particularly useful for organisations with complicated compliance requirements and highly regulated workloads. While the solution does not make you compliant, it provides a robust centralised infrastructure to support compliance, ensuring that compliance requirements can be quickly configured and automated.
Confidence in the cloud
Security shouldn’t be a postscript to cloud migration. Solutions, such as the Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS ensure that you can have confidence in your cloud platform’s security and resilience from day one. Built-in security measures, such as automated backup and disaster recovery mechanisms and continuous monitoring give you peace of mind that your data is protected and compliant.
A combination of security-first strategy and innovative solutions create the strongest possible foundation for transformation and allow organisations across our region to gain the maximum possible benefits from the cloud.
At PwC Middle East, we place utmost importance on cybersecurity and consider it a priority when helping organisations securely transition to the cloud. We are not only focused on securing data, but also on establishing new standards for secure cloud transitions. Together with our alliances, we enable companies to safely migrate to the cloud and undergo a secure transformation into the digital future
Getting security controls right from the earliest stages of cloud migration is critical, which is why together with AWS, we have collaborated to work closely with clients in helping them find an efficient, effective and safe way to migrate to the cloud.
For more information about how PwC and AWS can support your cloud migration, please do contact us
