How Asset Inventory Enables Cloud Migration
Moving to the cloud offers companies numerous benefits, including increased flexibility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. According to the Infosys Cloud Radar 2023 research report, “two-thirds of companies have increased cloud spending this year, and 80% say they intend to increase spending in the year ahead.” Foundry, an IDG, Inc. company, stated in their 2023 Cloud Computing report that respondents “said more than half (52.1%) of their total IT environment, including infrastructure, applications, and data analytics has been shifted to the cloud.” Cloud computing is a significant and growing part of many organizations’ IT environments.
This makes sense because cloud services enable organizations to scale their computing resources based on demand, allowing for more efficient use of infrastructure and reduced operational costs. However, the Infosys Cloud Radar 2023 research report also discovered that around 70% of respondents had only consumed 50% of the cloud services that they had contracted and that most contracts needed to be extended because the organization had been unable to consume their contracted amount in the given timeframe. While the cloud provides accessibility to data and applications from anywhere, fostering collaboration, innovation, and agility within the organization, it’s apparent that most organizations have trouble getting it right.
An up-to-date and constantly updated asset inventory plays a crucial role in enabling a smooth and secure cloud migration. When an organization migrates its resources and data to the cloud, it introduces new complexities and potential security risks. Effective asset management helps organizations address these challenges and ensures a successful transition.
Before migrating to the cloud, it's essential to have a comprehensive inventory of all the digital assets within the organization, including hardware, software, data, and network resources. This inventory provides a clear understanding of what can be moved to the cloud and what should remain on-premises.
Critical Business Functions and Dependency Mapping
Critical business functions are the core activities that keep an organization running smoothly and generating revenue. AI and data science can be used to identify critical business functions and their associated IT assets as well as dependencies between assets. Understanding these dependencies allows you to more accurately categorize assets based on their criticality, sensitivity, and compliance requirements. This is crucial for allocating resources and developing an effective cloud migration plan. An accurate asset inventory also enables your organization to create a plan that takes into account all of the assets involved and helps you create a plan for how to protect them effectively in the new environment.
Security Posture and Configuration
An asset inventory allows organizations to assess the security posture of their assets so that they can prioritize and address security weaknesses before migrating to the cloud. This assessment helps in identifying vulnerabilities, understanding potential threats, and determining the level of risk associated with each asset.
An asset inventory also tracks which assets are properly configured and adhere to security best practices. This establishes a secure baseline for assets that will be moved to the cloud.
Compliance and Governance
Keeping an accurate asset inventory helps maintain accountability and transparency in your cloud environment. It provides the hard data to prove that your organization's cloud migration strategy complies with regulatory requirements and internal governance policies as well as ensuring that sensitive data is protected and complies with data privacy regulations.
Ongoing Monitoring and Change Management
An asset inventory monitors the security status of assets in real time. During and after the migration, continuous monitoring helps detect and respond to security threats or anomalies, allowing organizations to maintain a secure cloud environment.
Cloud migration often involves changes to an organization's technology stack and operational processes. An asset inventory tracks these changes, helping your organization maintain control over its digital assets during the migration process.
As organizations scale their cloud resources, an asset inventory adapts dynamically to include new assets and resources in the security framework, ensuring that your security posture remains strong as your cloud environment grows.
Conclusion
An asset inventory is the foundation of a secure and successful cloud migration. It is capable of automatically updating itself as your IT environment changes, keeping track of assets, critical business functions, dependencies, security configuration data, vulnerability data, and more. This information provides your organization with the necessary insights, risk assessment, and control to ensure that the correct assets are migrated, allowing you to minimize risks while maximizing the success of your cloud migration.
AI-Powered Complete Asset Visibility
The Redjack solution includes an AI engine capable of not only giving you complete visibility into your connected IT asset infrastructure but also mapping how those assets connect to each other and to your critical business functions. Armed with this information you can develop a data-centric strategy to migrate your systems to the cloud, as well as improve the efficiency of both your IT operations and overall business functions.
Contact us to learn how Redjack has helped some of the world's largest corporations and government agencies improve their cybersecurity asset management and manage their cyber risk.
