Businesses move their operations to the cloud because of the many advantages this technology offers, including increased agility and scalability, cost savings, improved capacity for collaboration, and enhanced business continuity — to name just a few. However, making the shift involves accepting one significant downside: increased security risks.
With traditional networks, security concerns are focused mainly on blocking external threats with perimeter security. In the cloud, attack vectors are significantly increased, which means bad actors have many more vulnerabilities they can exploit.
To help businesses reduce those risks, Pvotal Technologies provides businesses with enterprise-grade cloud applications engineered with an unparalleled focus on accessibility, dependability, and security.
“Pvotal’s innovative approach to enterprise infrastructure results in an environment where growth and agility go hand-in-hand with security,” explains Yashin Manraj, CEO of Pvotal. “Security is at the core of how we develop. By prioritizing control over the end-to-end infrastructure, we provide the capability to rapidly eliminate the common concerns our clients face.”
Manraj brings deep technical knowledge to Pvotal, gained from years of experience in product development, design, business, and coding. Prior to launching Pvotal, he was a computational chemist, an engineer working on novel challenges at the nanoscale, and a key player in initiatives aimed at building more secure systems at the world’s best engineering firms. As a result, he has a unique perspective that assists him in identifying and solving gaps in the product pipeline.
“Our mission at Pvotal is to build our clients sophisticated enterprise solutions with no limits,” Manraj asserts. “Our expertise empowers us to develop enterprises that are built for rapid change, seamless communication, scalability to infinity, and top-notch security.”
The key to effective cloud-native security
Cloud-native applications are designed to take advantage of the unique characteristics of the cloud environment. Their features allow for enhanced scalability and elasticity, giving users greater agility when it comes to innovating and growing their business capabilities.
Microservice architecture is one of the hallmarks of cloud-native apps. It serves to provide a collection of independent services that communicate with each other, rather than relying on a single codebase and centralized deployment, which is the norm in monolithic architecture.
Yet, these unique features introduce a new generation of security risks, as the dynamic nature of the cloud-native landscape means entry points that could facilitate a breach are constantly in flux. With an increased number of applications, there is a higher risk of misconfiguration and other user-generated errors that lead to security vulnerabilities.
Fixing cloud security with a LowOps approach
To address the risks inherent in cloud-native apps and infrastructure, Pvotal employs a unique development approach it calls “LowOps.”
“LowOps is an innovative approach to infrastructure development that maximizes security in the cloud space by minimizing the need for human engagement,” explains Manraj. “Leveraging LowOps allows organizations to systematically limit human involvement. The risk landscape is reduced as human involvement is restricted to ‘break glass’ procedures.”
Pvotal’s LowOps approach is inspired in part by disturbing statistics showing that 74 percent of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human errors. Lapses in human performance during implementation and maintenance are a key area where the risks associated with human involvement surface.
“It’s common for human involvement to play a core role in the security frameworks put in place in the cloud,” Manraj says. “Human agents are often charged with keeping systems up to date by addressing certain issues either during or following the update process, but if human agents put off critical system updates or make mistakes while implementing them, vulnerabilities are left unaddressed.”
LowOps takes human involvement out of the equation by empowering the automation of routine cloud maintenance and deployment tasks, including those focused on security. It integrates components into enterprise design that automatically conduct tasks like adjusting scaling limits and installing security patches, and boosts cloud security by leveraging decoupled architecture to allow for segmentation and isolation.
“Decoupled architecture introduces a more robust security approach by reducing an infrastructure’s attack surface,” Manraj explains. “It limits the extent of a breach to the unique element that has been compromised. Decoupled architecture also allows for components to be more easily updated or swapped out when vulnerabilities are identified.”
Cloud-native applications give businesses the tools they need to increase agility and efficiency. Unfortunately, they are often lacking when it comes to security. Pvotal provides customized solutions that are redefining the standards for native-cloud development, deployment, and support by weaving reliable security into the DNA of applications and infrastructure.
“The LowOps approach provides a transformative solution to the persistent security vulnerabilities human involvement brings to the cloud,” says Manraj. “It provides businesses with the means to mitigate risks efficiently and effectively, all while improving their technical capabilities and taking full advantage of the benefits of the native-cloud applications and infrastructure.”
