TL;DR

This blog post explores how enterprises can enhance their Azure cloud environments with automated security controls. The approach has proved to ease tensions between security and development teams, by balancing the need for protection and developer productivity.

The blog post will cover how mnemonic and F5’s approach enables developer teams to work efficiency while maintaining security through API discovery, automated controls, and managed services.

The current state of enterprise cloud

Enterprises in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are among the countries leading cloud computing adoption in the EU, and yet many organisations have found that the path to the cloud isn't as straightforward as initially planned. While the vision of being "fully cloud" by a specific date seemed achievable a few years ago, the reality has proven more nuanced. Most enterprises now expect they'll maintain hybrid environments for the next 5-10 years, or longer, especially those with large on-premises solutions.

This hybrid reality creates unique challenges, such as managing and securing multiple environments with limited in-house cloud security skills, and balancing the needs of security against the sometimes competing needs of development teams.

Why security needs to evolve

In many organisations, the shift to cloud has transferred significant control over infrastructure to development teams, allowing them to innovate quickly. Security teams may find they’re viewed as a roadblock that hinders development, which may leave them out of cloud and app security discussions. However, prioritising development time-to-market over security creates inconsistencies and risk.

Without security team involvement, many organisations rely on default security tools within their cloud environments. While Microsoft Azure, for example, provides numerous native security features, enterprises often need more measures to meet their internal security or regulatory requirements, while maintaining consistent security policies across cloud and on-premises environments. It’s clear that security teams need to be included in cloud management, but the main challenge is balancing protection and developer productivity.

A developer-first security approach

At mnemonic, we believe security can and should be an enabler for developers, not a source of friction. Working with F5, we help organisations implement security that integrates with modern developmental practices. These solutions ease tensions between security and development teams, while also helping security enforce consistent policies across the entire hybrid environment.

F5® Distributed Cloud Web App and API Protection (WAAP) enables security teams to provide guardrails so that developers can still move quickly without creating risk. Integration with the CI/CD pipeline builds security into app development early so organisations can shift left while also protecting production applications against threats, including bots and DDoS attacks.

APIs are another key topic for developer and security collaboration. Developers rely on APIs to build modern applications, but APIs are proving to be increasingly risky, especially when they lack security. F5’s automated discovery makes it easier for developers to identify and document APIs, which can then be protected, all with a single solution.

Distributed Cloud WAAP is a cloud-based solution running on Azure, other public and private clouds, or on-premises. It continuously protects both cloud and on-premises environments to simplify management, increase visibility, and enforce consistent security without impeding developers.

Laying the foundation for hybrid cloud security

The F5-mnemonic partnership goes back more than two decades, and we’ve observed many organisations shift their focus and find their way in this new hybrid reality. In recent years, we’ve been challenged by several of our customers to help provide a solid foundation for their hybrid cloud security.

A recent example of which, includes a customer who wanted to migrate their applications to Azure without losing the level of security they had on-premises with F5 BIG-IP®. To solve this challenge, we used Distributed Cloud Services to secure their applications through a combination of SaaS-based regional edge and local customer edge deployments for consistency.

As a long-time customer, they also used mnemonic's Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, including Argus Network Analysis with data from BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator prior to their cloud migration. Now this solution runs in a virtual cluster on Azure to perform full encrypted network traffic analysis in addition to the security provided by F5 for multi-layered defences.

The complete security picture

This approach goes beyond just implementing technology. As one of the largest IT security service providers in Europe with more than 25 years of experience, mnemonic provides both partial and fully managed security services to help our customers close security gaps and augment their technical resources.

Our team of more than 350 security experts work closely with customers to ensure security controls improve rather than hinder development processes. By implementing automated, developer-friendly security controls backed by mnemonic’s broad expertise and F5 technology, enterprises can enhance their Azure environments while maintaining development velocity.

Ready to strengthen hybrid cloud security without hindering developers? Contact us to learn more about how we can help.