Gartner Research

Essential Skills for Cloud Security Architects

Published: 02 March 2023

Summary

Becoming an effective cloud security architect means building the necessary skills and disciplines to both envisage and implement cloud security. Here, we identify the essential skills that security and risk management technical professionals specializing in this area need to obtain and cultivate.

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Overview

Key Findings
  • Cloud security requires architects to learn both core skills and emerging skills that span strategy, leadership, operational and technical areas of interest, based on their unique circumstances.

  • Cloud service provider tools and third-party vendor services provide security architects with an array of capabilities to assemble effective defenses. Architects will need to learn how to fulfill cloud security requirements with these emerging capabilities.

  • Core security capabilities in the cloud focus on native tooling in IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, as well as capabilities like security service edge (SSE) and cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPPs). The latter are formed from the convergence of

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  • IaaS/PaaS/SaaS Security Deployments
  • Native Cloud Security Tools
  • Cloud IAM Patterns
  • Cloud-Native Application Protection Platforms
  • Cloud Security Frameworks, Standards and Best Practices
  • Business Architecture
  • Strategic Planning
  • Cloud WAAP/CDN/DDoS Services
  • Cloud DevSecOps
  • Container Service Security
  • Cloud Risk Management
  • Cloud Security Architecture Methods
  • Political Navigation
  • Cloud Security Governance
  • Hypervisor Security
  • Privacy Advocacy

Analysts:

Fred Sotolongo

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