Watch: Cisco’s Vishak Raman on why CIOs, CISOs need to up their cloud security game

The haste among enterprises to move to the cloud during the pandemic has created some problems, specifically in terms of security. A CFO Pulse Survey in May 2020 showed that 53% of the respondents cited growth in operations as a key investment area, 37% said expenditure would be prioritized for the workforce, while 37% cited technology as an important expenditure. Only 3% of respondents considered investments in cybersecurity.    

The first quarter of 2020 saw cloud spends increase 37% to $29 billion, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Similarly in the first quarter of 2021, Singapore based technology analyst firm Canalys said cloud spends grew by 35% to $41.8 billion.  

The rush towards cloud saw migration projects has taken places without fully addressing security issues before deployment. Different cloud vendors have picked security solutions of their choice, with no co-ordination and a standard security protocol.

In the context of this scenario, San Jose, California headquartered Cisco has found an opportunity to address security. While its overall product revenues were down by 1% in the second quarter of 2021, product revenue in terms of security offerings was up by 10%.  

“Do you get the same granularity, the same visibility, control as what you used to have on-premise? The answer is a clear No,” Vishak Raman, director, security business, Cisco India and SAARC, told TechCircle in a recent interview. Raman spoke about the challenges with cloud security currently, the different types of threats it faces and what CISO, CIOs need to do to up their cloud security game.