Since the outbreak of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the risk of cyberattacks has greatly expanded at the digital edge. Cybercrime costs the world economy more than $1 trillion with the average cost to organizations estimated to be more than half a million dollars per incident.
Risk has been compounded by a large number of companies quickly shifting network capacity to cater to increasing volumes of remote worker data traffic.
This has prompted a surge in cloud migration and broad implementation of cloud-based digital infrastructure as part of a hybrid infrastructure strategy.
Balancing cybersecurity concerns
Jennifer Cooke, research director, edge strategies, IDC, states: “Shifts in population centres, the increasing occurrence of cyberattacks, rapidly expanding data volumes and compliance needs, the creation of business ecosystems, and the transformation to digital business, have been driving the need for a new approach to digital infrastructure.”
She added that these market forces are driving IT leaders to consider the best strategies and prioritize investments across the digital core, edge, and exchange of data.
Global study’s APAC segment
The Equinix 2020-21 Global Tech Trends Survey (GTTS) found 70% of all respondents believe migrating to the cloud is a top priority, with 80% focused on digitizing their IT infrastructure. Asia-Pacific shares the same sentiment with 65% of respondents identifying cloud migration as a top priority, with 76% looking to digitize their IT infrastructure.
Comparison of tech trends Asia Pacific vs the World
This move is not being made lightly, with the threat of data leaks/cyberattacks because of increased cloud adoption being perceived as one of the biggest threats to organizations in Asia-Pacific (50%).
Michael Montoya, chief information security officer, Equinix, commented that digital transformation is essential for business survival. Every company is becoming a software company and the pandemic has accelerated the need for digital transformation.
Findings from the 2021 Gartner Board of Directors Survey show 69% of boards accelerated their digital business initiatives in the wake of COVID-19.
“Moving to the cloud is at the heart of this transformation. However, as our GTTS shows, many digital leaders remain nervous about this migration, with IT decision-makers highlighting fears around increased data leaks and security breaches,” he continued.
“Cyber hygiene remains vitally important in the cloud.”
Singapore data points from the Global Tech Trends Survey
Singaporean IT leaders select hybrid or multi-cloud when future-proofing digital infrastructure. There has found there has been a significant year-on-year leap in companies planning to move business-critical applications to the cloud, despite cybersecurity concerns.
The need to remain competitive and cater to increased user demands has prompted Singaporean companies to say they are deploying hybrid (57%) or multi-cloud (35%) in 2020-21, trending up significantly year over year.
As Singapore digital leaders build robust digital infrastructures to ensure future success, the survey revealed that 40% of them plan to move business-critical applications to the cloud, despite ongoing concerns over cloud security.
88% of IT decision-makers in Singapore said digitizing their IT infrastructure is a top priority, with 86% working to improve cyber security.
More than half (64%) of respondents in Singapore said they believe the threat of data leaks and cyberattacks because of more distributed user devices is one of the biggest threats to organizations globally.
86% of respondents in Singapore said they are prioritizing improving their organization’s cybersecurity—a significant increase from the 66% who said this in the 2019-20 edition of the survey.
