State and local governments and educational institutions are increasingly adopting cloud infrastructure to meet operational needs, enhance speed and improve services. However, the multi-cloud environments that enable this transformation also present a new set of security challenges.
Traditional security solutions, designed for on-premises data centers, fail to provide the visibility, control, and orchestration required in the cloud. This means that IT professionals urgently need unified cloud security strategies to effectively protect their multi-cloud architectures and ensure seamless delivery of critical services without interruption.
Complexity of multi-cloud security
While multi-cloud environments offer flexibility by allowing agencies and organizations to leverage the best services from multiple providers, they come with a downside: siled systems and fragmented security controls.
Shift to a unified security approach
The rise of cloud-native applications and self-service models often leaves IT teams without complete visibility, leading to unclear security ownership and increased risk of undetected threats or misconfigurations. Security alerts across different cloud platforms often lack correlation, making it difficult to effectively identify and respond to systemic risks. Furthermore, the APIs that connect these environments, if not properly managed, can do more harm than good – introducing new attack vectors and increasing the complexity of the security landscape.
To address these vulnerabilities, cloud security needs an approach that provides end-to-end visibility and simplifies security operations across all platforms.
A unified cloud-native security tool, like Wiz's Cloud Security Platform, can transform how state and local governments and educational institutions approach cloud security.
Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPPs) like the Wiz Cloud Security Platform provide end-to-end visibility across cloud applications, services, and workloads, enabling agencies to detect risks and vulnerabilities early. By consolidating all security functions into a single platform, CNAPPs break down the silos that currently hinder efficient risk management.
One of the most important aspects of cloud security standardization is risk prioritization. Organizations with complex cloud deployments, including government agencies and educational institutions, often receive thousands of alerts daily but lack the tools to effectively contextualize them. Solutions like Wiz Cloud—certified by FedRAMP Moderate and StateRAMP—identify and prioritize risks based on context and potential impact, allowing security teams to focus on the most critical threats first. This triage capability is essential for organizations with limited resources that need to increase the effectiveness of their security teams.
Other benefits of the standardized approach
In addition to prioritizing risks, a unified cloud security platform provides other benefits that are difficult to achieve when IT and security systems operate independently of each other:
Enable Zero Trust: A unified cloud security platform can significantly enhance the implementation of Zero Trust architectures. CNAPPs can map relationships between applications, services, and data and identify potential attack paths. By constantly monitoring these communications and enforcing security policies at every level, organizations can reduce their attack surfaces.
Addressing the skills gap: Managing security across multiple cloud platforms requires specialized knowledge, which is often expensive and in short supply. Unified cloud security platforms help address this challenge by simplifying security operations. For example, Wiz's agentless approach allows for rapid deployment, with full visibility into the cloud within 24 hours. This ease of use is critical for organizations that cannot afford long downtimes or complex implementations. Furthermore, the Wiz Cloud Security Platform provides graphical interfaces and automated workflows that make it easier for non-security personnel, such as developers and project managers, to understand and address security issues in their domains.
Building public trust: Security is not just about protecting data, it is also about maintaining trust. As more services move online, participants, students, and faculty need to feel confident that their personal information is secure and that systems are resilient against cyberattacks. A unified cloud security approach can help protect this trust. By ensuring that all cloud environments are secured through one cohesive strategy, agencies and organizations can reduce the likelihood of a breach and demonstrate that they are taking the necessary steps to protect sensitive information. This not only secures data but also enables them to continue providing essential services without interruption.
As state and local governments and educational institutions continue their cloud journeys, they must adopt a unified approach to security. The complexity of multi-cloud environments requires a solution that provides visibility, correlates security risks, and prioritizes vulnerabilities.
The time to act is now – before a fragmented approach to security leads to technical debt and a loss of confidence in an organization's ability to protect its users.
Learn more about how Wiz provides end-to-end visibility, continuous risk mitigation, and compliance reporting in the cloud.
Written by Dave Karakis
Dave Karakis is National Director of State, Local Government, and Education (SLED) Markets at leading cloud security company Wiz. He previously held positions at Okta, Adobe, and Symantec.
