COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdowns altered the course of history. Children looked to their parents to provide advice on how to persevere in trying times. I told my children that something good can come from something bad. The same is true when it comes to security. The dramatic shift to a remote workforce was effectively leveraged by many organizations to enhance their security posture.

We recently received a call from the CISO of a large organization, who asked for CDW’s help. He explained that one of his organization’s competitors had experienced a significant security breach that shut down its operations for several days. An employee in an administrative office had clicked a link on a malicious email that opened the door for a devastating ransomware outbreak.

It can be frustrating when you ask if an IT system is safe, and your expert resource responds, “It depends,” followed by a quip that the only secure system is one that’s powered off. Not so helpful.

Most IT teams are proficient in working with one cloud service provider (CSP) or on one facet of cloud computing, but increasingly, they are being asked to manage multiple cloud environments. The shift is substantial, especially because when it comes to security, the devil is in the details.

We know that risks are involved with multicloud Infrastructure as a Service implementations. It’s critical to know what they are and how to manage them. Let’s start by examining how we got here, and why there’s no turning back now.

When organizations first deploy a cloud security posture management tool, it’s often the first time IT staff members are seeing their cloud environment from a security perspective. When they learn that a certain port was unintentionally open, or that a misconfiguration has left data unprotected, one of the most common reactions I hear is, “I didn’t know that!”

That’s not a position anyone wants to be in with their cloud environments. Yet it happens frequently, especially as more organizations engage multiple cloud service providers. Luckily, CSPM tools provide the centralized visibility that IT staffers need to keep cloud environments secure. They can run automated audits to check configurations against security and compliance rule sets, identify critical vulnerabilities and even fix them, as directed, via auto-remediation.

The cloud is both powerful and potentially complex, so it’s difficult to perform a comprehensive, continuous check on a cloud environment manually. That’s where CSPM tools come in.