Cloud-native security

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Not a day goes by where the news doesn't contain some story about a company being hacked or somehow losing their customers' data. Even countries/regions aren't immune to the problems created by treating security as an afterthought. For years, companies have treated the security of customer data and, in fact, their entire networks as something of a "nice to have". Windows servers were left unpatched, ancient versions of PHP kept running, and MongoDB databases left wide open to the world.

However, there are starting to be real-world consequences for not maintaining a security mindset when building and deploying applications. Many companies learned the hard way what can happen when servers and desktops aren't patched during the 2017 outbreak of NotPetya. The cost of these attacks has easily reached into the billions, with some estimates putting the losses from this single attack at 10 billion US dollars.

Even governments aren't immune to hacking incidents. The city of Baltimore was held ransom by criminals making it impossible for citizens to pay their bills or use city services.

There has also been an increase in legislation that mandates certain data protections for personal data. In Europe, GDPR has been in effect for more than a year and, more recently, California passed their own version called CCDA, which comes into effect January 1, 2020. The fines under GDPR can be so punishing as to put companies out of business. Google has already been fined 50 million Euros for violations, but that's just a drop in the bucket compared with the potential fines.

In short, security is serious business.

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