Cloud-native applications and even entire cloud-native companies are popping up all over these days — and why not? The convenience and low overhead of starting from scratch in the cloud has undeniable appeal. There is just one issue that companies may overlook in their haste to move apps to cloud: security.

Ramin Sayar, president and CEO of Sumo Logic Inc., spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE*, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during AWS re:Invent about his company’s unique position in the data analytics market.

“We have earned the right now after seven years and with 100 petabytes a day that we’re analyzing every single day to be a lot more prescriptive for customers in terms of how to approach the way they build, run and secure these modern apps,” he said.

Sayar stated that being born and bred in AWS gives Sumo Logic special affinity with other customers using AWS.

Airborne threats: securing cloud apps

Because of its experience in AWS, Sayar said the company feels confident advising customers on how to architect and secure their cloud environments. He revealed the company conducted a study of Sumo Logic customers using AWS and found that an alarming portion of them were not securing their cloud applications.

Since then, Sumo Logic has become more proactive in contacting customers directly about beefing up security with Amazon’s security service or Sumo Logic’s. “One of the newest products that we just announced in early access is in threat vulnerability and threat intelligence, because now we get a 360-degree view for a lot of our customers,” he said.

Cheat sheet

As far as his advice for building and securing modern cloud apps, Sayer has three tips: “Understand what are the mission-critical workloads that you need to migrate; categorize those. Second is, which are the green field apps that you’re building and why? And what type of retention and security policies do you need?” he said. And finally: “The third is, the other set of applications you don’t really care about — leave them for now.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS re:Invent. (*Disclosure: AWS and other companies sponsor some AWS re:Invent segments on SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE. Neither AWS nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo by SiliconANGLE