The Future of Cloud Security in the Middle East | Research Report

According to BlueWeave Consulting, the regional cloud market is growing at a CAGR of 21%, and will reach US$9.8 billion by 2027, up from US$2.7 billion in 2020. UAE organisations have made strong progress in the transition to the cloud, ranking as the secondhighest adopter of public cloud services globally6

Additionally, KSA has witnessed a 16% increase in cloud services from 2019 with its cloud first policy to facilitate cloud adoption in both public and private sectors. And cloud is forecasted to reach a market opportunity of up to US$10 billion dollars by 20307

During the global tech event LEAP23 in Riyadh in February, His Excellency Eng. Abdullah bin Amer Alswaha, the Minister of Communications and IT, said investments from tech giants like Microsoft, Oracle, Huawei and Zoom would support future technologies, digital entrepreneurship and tech startups.

How would you rate cloud adoption in your company?

How would you rate cloud security in your company?

Bearing in mind we are speaking to cloud security decision-makers and leaders, it is concerning to see that 35% say cloud adoption at their own organisation is average or poor, and 36% state that cloud security at their company is also average or poor.

This suggests that although great leaps forward have been made in the region, there is still work to do –and also opportunity.

Cloud adoption clearly shows scope for further growth, but it is also vital that cloud security keeps pace with that increased adoption. The similarity between the two sets of figures from the survey suggests that this is the case, with the data almost mirroring each other.

It would have been more of a concern had adoption been outpacing security, but that does not appear to be the case. That said, even organisations with average levels of cloud adoption could (and arguably should) have excellent cloud security.

(6) https://economymiddleeast.com/news/uae-ranks-second-globally-in-public-cloud-adoption/ (7) https://datatechvibe.com/data/cloud-computing-impacting-middle-easts-transformation-goals/

With the growth of highly sensitive and economy-critical data stored and processed on the cloud – such as national and state government data, finance and healthcare data –it is essential to distinguish them from other data according to dedicated cloud infrastructure to ensure a nation’s data sovereignty.

Currently, the so-called sovereign cloud is about protection and taking advantage of those highly sensitive or critical data in terms of public and private sectors. Practically, the sovereign cloud could provide a trusted and controllable physical place for data storage and process under one national jurisdiction and sovereignty8

Clearly, the sovereign cloud would prevent data access from outside of the nation in any circumstances. Because of this, all cloud operations and service deliveries are visible, accessible and controllable for regulatory authorities, so that it is guaranteed to comply with all applicable local laws and regulations for cloud compliance purposes.

Practically, sovereign cloud is a good measure and deployment trend to defend against rapid deglobalisation and new barriers of entry as a result of increasing or even jeopardised geopolitical tensions.

Due to sovereign cloud being within geographical boundaries of the nation state, it can provide real time support and safeguard for local industry to develop fledgling local cloud companies to nurture more tech unicorns – helping to create a global digital transformation hub. As a critical foundation of digital transformation, sovereign cloud could guarantee the long-term self-sufficiency of local digital ecosystems and applications in search of new killer mega apps.

Hybrid cloud, to empower the future cloud performance

To further unleash the stronger data power at scale for various organisations, such as SMEs and the private sector, the hybrid cloud is a more practical and efficient option. Hybrid cloud mixes computing environments so that services could be delivered by running a combination in different public clouds and private clouds with on-premises data centres or even edge locations9

By comparison, hybrid cloud would be an increasingly common solution to migrate and manage cloud workloads and services for different kinds of users based on specific business needs. With the hybrid cloud, the advantages of both private and public cloud would be taken, while their disadvantages could also be effectively avoided.

For example, the scalability of cloud resources and reliability of public cloud and great flexibility and security could be merged together. And the high cost, data security issues might be also eliminated. In summary, hybrid cloud is versatile. It can provide dynamic or frequently changing workloads, separate critical workloads from less-sensitive workloads, process big data, locally move to cloud incrementally, support real-time process capability and so on10

(8) https://www.cio.com/article/308751/why-sovereign-cloud-is-a-hot-topic-5-tips-and-the-background.html

(9) https://cloud.google.com/learn/what-is-hybrid-cloud#:~:text=A%20hybrid%20cloud%20is%20a,centers%20or%20 %E2%80%9Cedge%E2%80%9D%20locations.

(10) https://www.netapp.com/hybrid-cloud/what-is-hybrid-cloud/

For instance, it has been seen that several industries are moving to hybrid cloud in the Middle East region. The main driver is business expansion, resource mobility, and application migration. In the UAE, it has been predicated that the hybrid cloud segment is expected to grow at higher CAGR from 2020 to 2027 with increasing adoption of hybrid cloud in industries, especially in SMEs by those previously mentioned remarkable technologies11

Hybrid cloud features prominently, driven by rapid digital transformation needs, where increased maturity in usage of the cloud allows flexibility of the choice of on-premise, off-premise, public or private cloud options based on the data and its classification and usage patterns – thereby reducing costs, minimising risk and better assimilation to support the demands of digital transformation.

In summary, cloud solutions have different value propositions and organisations should apply cloud based on their preference case by case. Therefore, both sovereign and hybrid cloud should be involved in national or regional multi-cloud strategy to unleash stronger digital power.

CLOUD SECURITY – THE KEY CONCERN

Cybersecurity is the key concern when choosing a cloud provider.

Organisations on the cloud are experiencing regular and accelerated cyber attacks as we pivot towards the case that cyberspace is cloud computing and cybersecurity is cloud security, paving the way for the coming of a new era of the Metaverse.

(11) https://www.gmiresearch.com/report/uae-cloud-computing-market/