Report: 75% of companies are focused on cloud-native apps

According to a new report by Tigera, 75% of companies are developing on cloud-native applications. The increasing development and deployment of cloud-native applications also creates the need for more advanced observability and security features.

The growth of cloud-native workloads accelerated with the rapid digitization caused by the pandemic and the need for more agile, powerful development tools. Gartner estimates that more than 95% of new digital workloads will be deployed on cloud-native platforms by 2025, up from 30% in 2021.

Given the dynamic, distributed, and volatile architecture of cloud-native applications, which in turn leads to a massive attack surface, it’s not surprising that the Tigera survey highlighted that 96% of respondents find one or more aspects of cloud-native application security to be challenging . Almost all respondents (96%) stated that security, compliance, and observability are the most challenging aspects of cloud-native applications.

The survey results also show that organizations are trying to reduce the application attack surface and quickly identify threats. Additionally, they see workload-based IDS/IPS, DPI, DDoS protection and WAF (69%), workload access controls (59%), and micro-segmentation (43%) as the top network security features they need.

When asked about the top barriers to container adoption in their organization, respondents indicated that the top barrier was a lack of skilled resources (56%). Complexity came second, cited as a barrier by 53% of respondents, closely followed by security (52%). Other obstacles respondents face are container orchestration management (42%), compliance (40%), and troubleshooting (30%). As one of the top barriers to successful container adoption, it is not surprising that most organizations (98%) have expressed a need for container security. The top two capabilities organizations need for container security are runtime security (74%) and workload assurance (71%). Image scanning rounds out the top 3, with 47% of organizations saying they need this capability for container security.

The survey results show that the move to cloud-native applications has strong momentum, but organizations need tools to increase visibility and provide security at the container, application, and network layers. These tools must remove roadblocks and delays during development and deployment while reducing the risk of delayed time to market, security vulnerabilities, and compliance violations.

Tigera commissioned Dimensional Research to survey more than 300 security and IT professionals from around the world. The survey sheds light on enterprise needs and challenges related to containers and cloud-native applications, particularly in the areas of security, observability, and compliance. Tigera focused on people with container responsibilities in companies with 10 or more employees. All respondents had direct container responsibility.

Read Tigera’s full report.