If there were two important takeaways from this year’s Qualys Security Conference year they would be how today’s complex hybrid environments are demanding security teams find ways to increase visibility into the state of their security posture and be able to quickly mitigate new risks as they arise.

With their respective keynotes, both CEO Philippe Courtot and Qualys chief product officer Sumedh Thakar showed just how sophisticated today’s environments have become. Today, all but the most straightforward environments consist of multiple cloud services, virtualized workloads, and traditional on-premises systems; and hundreds of application containers, microservices, and serverless functions.

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Without APIs, it would be near impossible to see enterprises being able to digitally transform themselves. After all, APIs are the connective-tissue between applications and systems and they make the management, automation and consumption of technology possible at scale. APIs are what enable organizations to liberate data from their applications, improve integration, and standardize how claims and information is governed.

However, what about the associated API security risks? That’s the subject Gartner analyst Mark O’Neill tackled in his presentation, API Security: Enabling Innovation Without Enabling Attacks and Data Breaches at Qualys Security Conference 2018. O’Neill sees API vulnerabilities as a serious enterprise risk in the years ahead. In fact, by 2020, he predicts API abuses will be the most frequent attack vector that results in data breaches for enterprise web applications. “We see more and more APIs as a threat vector,” O’Neill said.

Attackers go after APIs, O’Neill said, because they’re a direct way to valuable data and enterprise resources. In addition to stealing data, APIs are also susceptible to other forms of attack, such a denial-of-service attacks, O’Neill said.

So what can organizations do to better secure their APIs and the resources and information they expose?

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The first day of Qualys Security Conference 2018 was a big one. Both CEO Philippe Courtot and Qualys chief product officer Sumedh Thakar detailed the challenges faced by many of today’s enterprises when it comes to the growth of cloud and the complexity of their hybrid environments. And they shared their visions of the road ahead on how enterprises can find ways to effectively manage their cloud environments and digital transformation efforts ahead.

A big theme of the day was how cloud security brings complexity and lack of visibility into modern environments.

Additionally, Qualys VP of engineering Dilip Bachwani provided a look at how the Qualys Cloud Platform is built to scale and perform; Jimmy Graham spoke on obtaining real-time vulnerability management, and attendees learned how to better secure their cloud deployments, containers, and web applications.

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Enterprises are moving full steam ahead when it comes to their digital transformation efforts. They’ve aggressively adopted cloud infrastructure and other cloud services, IoT, application containers, serverless functionality, and other technologies that are helping their organization to drive forward.

Those organizations that are way down the road in their digital transformation efforts say that they’ve witnessed improved business decision-making – both when it comes to making better decisions and when it comes to making those decisions more rapidly. They also say that they’ve improved their customer relationships by delivering an improved customer digital experience.

So it’s time to celebrate and declare digital victory, right?

Hold off before we book the band and order the champagne for the big party. In fact, those who want to move forward securely and confidently in their risk and regulatory compliance postures have some challenges ahead.

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The rise of cloud computing coupled with DevOps is forcing enterprises to rewrite their cybersecurity playbook, and part of that book will be written this week at Qualys Security Conference 2018 in Las Vegas.

Today, the dual cloud and DevOps mega-trends are helping companies to digitally transform how they build, deploy, and manage all aspects of their business. They’re delivering software and digital services more rapidly, able to respond with more agility to changing business and technological demands through the effective use of automation, machine learning, IoT, and the continuous delivery of new software services and features. This all comes at a price, however.

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For more than two decades SSL has ruled the roost as the predominant encryption protocol on the Web. This is unfortunate, at least because in recent years many vulnerabilities have surfaced in SSL. It’s had its day, done its job, and is now battle weary. Today, to say the least, early versions of SSL and TLS don’t get the job done when it comes to securing website traffic.

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Enterprises are having a challenging time securing their data and systems. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We recently reached out to Tyler Shields, principal analyst at Forrester to discuss his presentation at Qualys Security Conference 2015, and what it means to be able to secure enterprises at “cloud scale.” And what it’s going to take for enterprises to succeed in security in the years ahead.

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LAS VEGAS – Philippe Courtot, Qualys (QLYS) founder and CEO, in his keynote address today at the Qualys Security Conference 2015, spoke to the massive and rapid evolution in business-technology systems currently underway in the enterprise. They are grappling with the complexities of securing their information in the public and private cloud, on mobile devices, and the data gathered by all of the sensors associated with the Internet of Things. Enterprises are “faced with the challenge of having to retool their entire infrastructure,” Courtot said.

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Let’s face it, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, mobile, big data, automation, DevOps, and the Internet of Things have all been hyped for some time. While the impact of these trends has likely been overstated in the short run, they’ve been likely understated over the long run. That is to say when it comes to the next decade, buckle up and get ready for there is a significant amount of disruption on its way.

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LAS VEGAS – Philippe Courtot, Qualys (QLYS) founder and CEO, said outdated software, security related application flaws, poor system configurations, obtaining an accurate view of asset inventory, and advanced threats are all continuous problems that security professionals must contend with when working to keep their applications and data secure.

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