A common misconception is that enterprises can afford to place cybersecurity on the backburner once they migrate assets to the cloud.

On the contrary, security must remain top of mind — especially in robust hybrid cloud infrastructures, where it becomes a shared responsibility between the end user, cloud provider and other interconnected services, according to Bobby Ford (pictured), senior vice president and global chief security officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

“We recently conducted a research report with the Ponemon Institute,” he said. “One of the stats that stood out in that report to me was something like … 58% of people are concerned about security as it relates to their cloud transformation journey. You would think that that number is low. And it’s not that the others are not concerned about security, but I think that many people have this misperception that once you go to the cloud or once you go to the public cloud, you no longer have to worry about security — that’s not the case.”

Ford spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and Rob Strechay at HPE Discover, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the changing face of security in today’s heterogeneous cloud. (* Disclosure below.)

Edge to cloud: The balanced approach to hybrid cybersecurity

As the enterprise moved from “cloud never” to “cloud only,” it’s resulted in today’s world where digitally-transformed organizations are storing, processing and operationalizing most of their data and digital assets in the cloud. Not all of those assets can be protected at all times.

An edge-to-cloud mindset allows the efficient tackling of complexity and prioritization of critical resources, mitigating the most damaging of all possible security risks, according to Ford.

“I think you have to think edge to cloud and your security framework — which we wrote a white paper [on] how security practitioners should think about security from edge to cloud,” he said. “Because I think that’s the only way you can tackle that complexity. Understanding that you can’t secure everything, so it’s critically important that you prioritize and that you take a balanced approach and you look at security from the edge to the cloud.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of HPE Discover:

(* Disclosure: Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. and Intel Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither HPE and Intel nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE