Unwrapping the Spaghetti of the Enterprise Digital Landscape

By Ste Nadin - Chief Architect

July 1, 2025 4 Minute Read

I have worked in and enjoyed driving digital transformation for the last 15 years. During this time, I’ve observed and encountered many benefits of the evolution of business practices but simplicity for large enterprises is certainly NOT one of them! So, I’m going to say it…

The complexity driven by digital transformation leads to opportunities for security breaches, malicious or accidental. As the surfaces increase, it becomes impossible for security teams to keep up and ensure the appropriate protection is in place. Not long ago you could manage your boundaries with a good firewall and intruder protection (IPS) and you would be good, but no longer! The drive to digitalization has caused fragmentation and this has led to complexity in how you secure your assets.   

The initial move to the cloud has not only stalled but, more often than not, we now see large enterprises re-patronize data and services back into traditionally owned data centers. This may be due to the reality of the cost of cloud, such as data storage, or simply the growing levels of data residency regulations. There are certainly still some advantages with a number of SaaS offerings of core services such as the ServiceNows and Workdays of this world, as well as standard productivity capabilities such a Microsoft M365, but these services sit in yet another location beyond your company’s network or even cloud. 

Add to this the post pandemic working world where we now see the drive to get employees back into the office, for at least some part of the week, resulting not in a totally remote- nor totally office-based workforce but a true flexible need to support employees at all times and in all locations.

Now, just think of the impact this fifth industrial revolution of GenAI is having on all of this — spreading data assets and IP even further, as well as the near horizon reality of the sixth one being Quantum looming ever closer. 

What does this really mean?

Well, for most enterprises today, this simply means that their people, data and applications are all in multiple locations. The complexity of being able to manage these assets in a simple and consistent way from direct malicious threats — such as security and data loss or even the non-malicious threat of IP exposure due to this complexity — is becoming far harder to control and manage. 

The enterprise landscape is becoming a true spaghetti of connections between the user,  the data and the applications they need to use.

 

The concept of this being a transitional state while the migration from data center to cloud occurs has also been debunked. This is now the de facto state for enterprise businesses for the considerable future!

Its importance, and therefore ownership is also changing. This used to be something for the IT team but more and more this is becoming a critical part of every business. The impact of the recent cyber attacks on major retailers in the UK has certainly shown this with some major names not being able to get goods into their stores and service their customers due to the impact. Technology business systems, data management and process flows are at the heart of how businesses operate and therefore this has moved from something to be managed on the side of the business to the beating heart with the executive team directly involved.

The above is not just my idle thoughts but the reality of the large enterprise that customers, myself and colleagues talk to on a daily basis.

How do you stay in control?

Well to start with you have to accept the reality that your data, people and applications are located across on-premise and cloud systems, meaning you need to have a combination of solutions that have been built to manage and control each of these from an established experience point of view delivering on-premises or on the cloud. A cloud solution ported to work on premise, or vice versa, is not going to provide the protection needed in depth and, as discussed, you cannot ‘make do’ because you are in transition. You need a long term, proven solution.

At the same time, you need to reduce the complexity for security teams to manage multiple solutions and ensure that policy is consistently applied in all locations in a simple manner.

Lastly, any enterprise needs to be able to respond to fast emerging threats and, while most security rules can and should be handled by simple check-box rules, the ability to respond to new emerging threats without having to wait for the vendor to publish a patch, all with  a policy language is vital.

At Skyhigh Security we believe that this is not about on-premises and cloud but about simply ensuring that you have a means to protect your most valuable assets. Your people, data and applications.

With a rich history in solutions grown up both on-premise and cloud native, we understand that giving our customers the control they need to produce and manage consistent policy in all locations to ensure the enterprise functions seamlessly, uniting the security protections appropriate to each.

Reach out today to learn more about Skyhigh Security. 

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