Research conducted by IBM indicates that a majority of global business leaders, more than 77%, have embraced a hybrid cloud strategy. This approach combines public and private cloud services, offering organizations flexibility and scalability.

With that said, the research also revealed that more than half of these leaders express ongoing concerns about cloud security – concerns that likely revolve around potential cybersecurity threats and data breaches in a cloud environment. Many respondents also find it challenging to maintain compliance in the cloud. They typically point out the complexities of aligning cloud operations with regulatory and industry-specific standards – standards that are vital for organizations in highly regulated sectors.

To help clients overcome these challenges, IBM (News - Alert) is set to evolve the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center with the addition of IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center Data Security Broker.

The center is a suite of modernized cloud security and compliance solutions that was originally designed to help enterprises mitigate risk and protect data across their hybrid, multicloud environments and workloads.

The updated IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center aims to help clients continuously monitor and manage their security and compliance from a central dashboard across their hybrid and public cloud environments – not just IBM Cloud.

With the addition of IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center Data Security Broker, developed in collaboration with Baffle, the capabilities of the solution suite extend beyond compliance posture management and workload protection capabilities to include application-level security. The IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center Data Security Broker solution provides a transparent layer of data encryption with format preserving encryption and anonymization technology to protect sensitive data used in business applications and AI workloads.

"IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center Data Security Broker is a year-long effort to produce a streamlined data protection solution for IBM customers," said Ameesh Divatia, CEO of Baffle (News - Alert). "By combining the IBM Cloud platform and Baffle's unique data-centric security approach, enterprises can confidently protect their highly sensitive, valuable data as it enters the cloud and is shared across the entire analytics pipeline."

But that’s not all that was added to the solution.

The suite also features enhanced capabilities such as cloud security posture management, workload protection and infrastructure entitlement management to safeguard hybrid and multicloud environments. Notably, workload protection prioritizes vulnerability management, utilizing container threat detection powered by open-source Falco, which employs advanced machine learning and behavioral analysis for real-time threat identification and prevention.

Intelligent automation technology with deployable architectures aims to accelerate secure cloud adoption, making compliance easier for developers and reducing post-deployment complexities. And expanded compliance capabilities, including automated implementation and management of compliance controls and centralized data collection, will be available in Q4 2023, aiding clients in meeting evolving regulatory standards.

The suite also offers visibility into third- and fourth-party risk posture through integrations with risk management solutions, helping organizations assess their security and compliance needs, including supply chain threats.

"IBM Cloud has a history of working with clients in financial services and other highly regulated industries, especially when it comes to helping them to drive innovation while protecting their sensitive data," said Rohit Badlaney, general manager, IBM Cloud Product and Industry Platform. "The expansion of the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center demonstrates our continued focus on industry-specific capabilities that help address real world business challenges for our clients.”

Expanding the IBM Cloud Security and Compliance Center, which is generally available and includes additional partner integrations, is a testament to IBM's mission of helping clients protect their workloads in hybrid, multicloud environments and the sensitive data within.