As organizations reassess their data security strategies at year end, many are considering moving from cloud services to on-prem solutions to gain greater control over their data and mitigate the risks associated with cloud vulnerabilities. Following many high-profile breaches in 2024 and the theft of customer data from multi-cloud data warehousing platforms, malicious attackers continue to exploit weaknesses in cloud infrastructure.
The widespread breaches and resulting data exposures have sparked concern in many industries, particularly for organizations that deliver the critical infrastructure the nation relies on. To mitigate the risk of exposure through cloud service attacks, organizations will reconsider their infrastructure and deployment strategies in the year ahead to improve their security posture, reduce reliance on third-party providers, and better align with compliance requirements.
The Trend Towards On-Prem Deployment
Multiple high-profile breaches in 2024 affected cloud-based services, allowing attackers to gain access to thousands of organizations and more than 100 million individuals. By compromising a cloud service, malicious actors can compromise customer instances and use stolen customer credentials to exfiltrate valuable data. Although some vulnerabilities can both be exploited on-prem and in the cloud, it’s also clear that cloud vulnerabilities are frequently exploited at scale. These high-profile breaches have led many organizations to reassess their infrastructure strategies.
In response, security teams in various industries, particularly those handling sensitive data, are considering moving to on-prem deployments. This would minimize the risk from cloud weaknesses, including vulnerabilities, stolen credentials, misconfigurations, insecure APIs and interfaces, poor identity and access management (IAM), data exposure, and lack of control across a complex and increasingly interconnected ecosystem. While returning to on-prem systems requires an investment in hardware and in-house knowledge, it also offers several advantages. On-prem deployments enable teams to:
- Maintain operations independent of internet connectivity and minimize reliance on 3rd party vendors
- Provide enhanced security capabilities in an air-gapped environment
- Monitor operations in real-time with greater visibility and minimal latency
- Create and implement redundant systems and failover mechanisms on-site
These benefits make on-prem solutions an attractive option for organizations prioritizing data control and security.
On-Prem Offers Enhanced Data Control
Unlike the shared responsibility models offered by cloud providers, on-prem deployment gives organizations complete ownership of their environment. This approach provides in-house security teams with direct access to stored data. As a result, they can implement custom security measures tailored to the specific needs of their organization, minimizing the risk of breaches and unauthorized access. On-prem deployment also offers greater flexibility in managing configurations, updates, and data storage, aligning with internal policies, complex regulatory requirements, and industry-specific standards.
Despite these advantages, on-prem solutions do require significant investment in hardware and maintenance. However, these investments may be offset by potential savings. For example, according to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024, public cloud breaches averaged $5.17 million, while on-prem breaches were the least expensive at $4.18 million on average.
Regulatory Alignment
While cloud solutions offer scalability and reduced upfront costs, on-prem deployment provides several unique advantages for regulatory compliance. On-prem deployment may simplify compliance with industry-specific regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS). Keeping all data stored within the organization’s own servers, often in an air-gapped environment, may make compliance simpler. For instance, healthcare organizations can more easily implement the physical safeguards required by HIPAA when data is stored on-site. This option also provides increased data privacy, because sensitive information remains within the company’s physical location, rather than being stored in a potentially poorly secured cloud offering.
And while returning to on-prem requires organizations to purchase hardware and manage it in-house, security teams also then gain full control over it. This enables them to customize the hardware and security controls to their unique needs and make upgrades as needed, with full visibility into changes in the environment. Along the same lines, on-prem deployment reduces dependency on external providers, which minimizes third-party risk and may even improve operational continuity when third-party services are disrupted by breaches or other unexpected events. A few key benefits of on-prem deployment for security and compliance teams include:
- Easier adherence to industry-specific regulations
- Greater control over data storage locations, helping teams meet diverse data sovereignty requirements
- Simpler to maintain audit trails and implement specialized compliance measures
These benefits make on-prem deployment particularly attractive for organizations in highly regulated industries or those handling sensitive data, providing the control and security necessary to meet specific compliance requirements.
Time to Switch Back
While cloud-first approaches have dominated the past decade, expect many organizations to start moving back towards on-prem deployments in 2025. For organizations operating in critical infrastructure sectors, this path is particularly compelling. The sensitive nature of their operations, combined with the increasing infiltration of nation-state actors in critical infrastructure, will drive these organizations to move away from cloud-first deployments to regain complete control of their environments.
About the Author
Itay Glick serves as Vice President of Products at OPSWAT and brings more than 17 years of executive management experience in cybersecurity at global technology companies based in the U.S., Europe, and Asia. Before OPSWAT, he served as AVP of network and cloud security at Allot, and before that, founded his own company and played a key role in managing the development of equipment for the lawful interception market on behalf of Verint Systems. Itay launched his career as a software engineer in an elite intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces. He holds an M.B.A. from Bar-Ilan University and a B.Sc. in electrical engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. Itay can be found on LinkedIn here.
