As someone who's spent years helping enterprises navigate their cloud transformation journeys, I wasn't surprised by the recent findings from CyberRisk Alliance's survey of 200 IT and security professionals, as reported in SC World's research article "Cloud security still a challenge as 1 in 4 companies cite skills gap." What did catch my attention, however, was the stark reality behind the numbers: one in four organizations cite insufficient expertise and training as their biggest barrier to effective cloud security implementation.
This isn't just a statistic – it's a wake-up call for our entire industry.
The State of Cloud Security: Progress with Pain Points
The SC World article reveals a complex picture of where we stand in 2025. On one hand, we're seeing remarkable progress. The majority of companies have successfully migrated to the cloud, with 53% working with one or two providers while 48% leverage three or more cloud platforms. This multi-cloud reality reflects the sophisticated approach modern enterprises are taking to balance performance, cost, and resilience.
Even more encouraging, 56% of respondents express moderate to high confidence in their cloud security posture. Organizations are making smart investments in identity and access management (77%), leveraging native cloud security services (66%), and emphasizing monitoring (60%) and encryption (56%). As one survey participant noted, they're "placing an emphasis on protections at the data layer in addition to the network and physical infrastructure layers" while "transitioning to a multi-layer defense strategy."
This multi-layered approach is exactly what we need in today's threat landscape. But here's where the challenge becomes clear.
The Skills Gap: Our Industry's Achilles' Heel
Despite these technological advances, the human element remains our weakest link. When one in four organizations struggle with insufficient cloud security expertise, we're not just talking about a minor operational hiccup – we're looking at a fundamental barrier to digital transformation success.
The impact of this skills shortage extends far beyond hiring challenges. As one respondent put it, "With all of the challenges in cloud security, the challenge our organization is least equipped to currently address is the advanced skill gap in our current resource pool to adequately keep up with constantly changing threat complexity and remediation."
This statement encapsulates the reality facing countless IT leaders today. The cloud security landscape evolves at breakneck speed. New threats emerge daily. Compliance requirements shift. Cloud providers introduce new services and security features regularly. Without properly trained teams, organizations find themselves perpetually playing catch-up, reactive rather than proactive in their security posture.
The consequences are tangible. Limited visibility into cloud assets becomes the norm rather than the exception. API security gaps persist. Misconfigurations multiply. Access management becomes unwieldy. Tools deployment lacks strategic coordination. Everything hinges on having people who can see what's happening in the cloud – and more importantly, understand what they're seeing.
The Visibility Challenge: More Than Just Technology
The survey identifies visibility as a critical pain point, and I couldn't agree more. But here's what many organizations miss: visibility isn't just about having the right tools. It's about having people who know how to use those tools effectively.
You can deploy the most sophisticated cloud security platform available, but without trained professionals who understand cloud architecture, network security principles, and threat detection methodologies, you're essentially flying blind. The tools become shelfware, dashboards go unmonitored, and alerts get ignored or misinterpreted.
This is where the skills gap becomes particularly dangerous. Organizations often invest heavily in technology while underinvesting in the human capital needed to make that technology effective. The result? False confidence in security posture based on tool deployment rather than actual security capability.
The Cost of Inaction
The economic implications of this skills shortage extend far beyond individual organizations. As the survey notes, just about every industry depends on cloud services from Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Any disruption to these platforms would have major economic impact on business and government alike.
When organizations lack the expertise to properly secure their cloud environments, they're not just putting their own data at risk – they're potentially contributing to systemic vulnerabilities that could affect entire supply chains, partner networks, and customer bases.
The skills gap also creates a vicious cycle. Organizations without proper cloud security expertise are more likely to experience incidents. These incidents damage confidence in cloud adoption, slowing digital transformation initiatives that could drive competitive advantage and economic growth.
A Solution That's Right in Front of Us
Here's the thing about the cloud security skills gap: it's entirely solvable. The challenge isn't that cloud security is impossibly complex or that training resources don't exist. The challenge is that many organizations don't know where to start or assume that quality training requires massive budget allocations.
At Aviatrix, we recognized this problem years ago. That's why we developed our Aviatrix Certified Engineer (ACE) program – comprehensive, hands-on training that's available completely free to anyone who wants to build real cloud networking and security expertise.
The ACE program isn't just another certification course. It's designed around the actual challenges that cloud professionals face every day. Students learn to design, deploy, and troubleshoot cloud networks across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. They gain hands-on experience with advanced concepts like multi-cloud connectivity, microsegmentation, and cloud network visibility.
Most importantly, the training is practical. Students work with real scenarios, real tools, and real problems. They don't just memorize concepts – they develop the muscle memory and intuitive understanding that separates truly capable cloud security professionals from those who simply have certifications on their resume.
Beyond Individual Training: Building Organizational Capability
While individual certification is valuable, the real impact comes when organizations commit to building comprehensive cloud security capability across their teams. The ACE program is designed to support this organizational transformation.
Teams that go through ACE training together develop shared vocabulary, common approaches to problem-solving, and aligned understanding of best practices. They can collaborate more effectively, make better architectural decisions, prevent and respond faster to security incidents.
This collective capability building is exactly what's needed to address the visibility challenges highlighted in the survey. When entire teams understand cloud networking and security principles, they can work together to design monitoring strategies, interpret alerts correctly, and respond appropriately to threats.
The Path Forward
The cloud security skills gap is real, but it's not insurmountable. Organizations that invest in comprehensive training programs will find themselves with significant competitive advantages: better security postures, more effective tool utilization, faster incident response, and greater confidence in their cloud operations.
The ACE program represents our commitment to addressing this industry-wide challenge. By making high-quality cloud networking and security training freely available, we're not just helping individual professionals advance their careers – we're contributing to a more secure, more capable cloud ecosystem for everyone.
For organizations struggling with the skills gap identified in the CRA survey, the solution is clear: invest in your people. Give them the training, tools, and support they need to excel in the cloud security domain. The technology is available. The threats are real. The only question is whether we'll commit to building the human expertise needed to bridge the gap between challenge and capability.
The cloud transformation train has left the station. The question now is whether your team has the skills to ensure it reaches its destination safely. The answer to that question might just determine your organization's success in the years ahead.
This analysis is based on findings from the CyberRisk Alliance survey featured in SC World's article "Cloud security still a challenge as 1 in 4 companies cite skills gap."
Learn more about Aviatrix ACE training at aviatrix.com/ace.
