Building a cloud modernisation pathway that boosts security and innovation

It is possible to modernise while staying secure?

Organisations across all industries are standing at a crossroads.

Pressure to modernise pulls them in one direction, but the responsibility to safeguard citizen, patient, customer and employee trust keeps them on their current pathway. This dynamic is seen across organisations in all sectors.

The result is that organisations have deferred tackling the complex and interwoven set of challenges around legacy systems, budget constraints, cloud complexity and skill shortages which has resulted in rising cyber security threats.

These challenges, along with the relentless demand for digital transformation, means it’s important to make decisions that have a lasting impact for innovation and security. But ageing technology estates, technical debt and an evolving cyber landscape make this journey challenging.

Rather than avoiding these difficulties, leading organisations are shifting their perspectives and focusing on the significant opportunities that lie within these challenges. 

Organisations are acting upon the potential to rethink, modernise, and build systems and services that are not only fit for today but also ready for tomorrow.

Here, we outline the core steps in this process. 

Begin secure modernisation by scoping the challenge

The digitalisation imperative is clear. 

More than a quarter of digital systems in the UK public sector alone are outdated, costing an estimated £45 billion in lost productivity savings.¹

Outside the public sector, the risks are just as stark, with 43% of UK organisations and 30% of UK charities having experienced a cyber security breach or attack in 2024.² 

Move fast to cut expensive legacy technology liabilities

Technical debt – the silent cost of outdated, inflexible technology – is now one of the largest barriers to innovation. For many organisations, years of incremental fixes have left core systems fragile, non-scalable and unable to integrate with modern applications posing a security risk. These “end of life” systems limit business performance and elevate risk as vendor support becomes unavailable, security updates end and even minor disruptions trigger significant downtime.

For healthcare providers, this can mean delays in patient care. For public sector organisations, citizens may lose access to critical services at a crucial moment. And across all industries, maintaining failing infrastructure can be a significant drain on resources.

Even when organisational leaders recognise the urgency, the reality of bringing digitalisation to life is harsh, with challenges ranging from limited budgets to rising operational costs and mounting demands to do more with shrinking budgets. Opting out can seem a tempting prospect, but organisations that defer modernisation cause further damage to their operational efficiency, degrade the customer (or citizen) experience and compromise their competitive edge.

Plan for the reality of security risk

Cyber security risks sit at the intersection of outdated systems and constrained resources. 

Without robust cyber security, reliability suffers, as each disruption erodes trust, causes reputational damage and creates further stress on scarce resources. 
In a digital-first world, reliable service delivery isn’t optional; it’s essential.

Organisations with inadequate tools, limited monitoring and weak regulatory compliance expose themselves to immediate and severe consequences, such as breached patient records, disrupted citizen services, fines and reputational damage.

Recent global examples of cyber security breaches are stark:

• A global enterprise breach exposed millions of consumer records and demonstrated how even large organisations remain vulnerable.3
• Media reports from the BBC outline how digital services lose their value when individuals lose trust in how data is handled.⁴

Ageing systems and under-resourced IT environments cause unplanned outages, poor service levels and fragile infrastructure. A single outage in a healthcare provider’s system for example, can delay critical patient care, while for a government body, it can mean citizens can’t access essential services. 

Shape your cloud so you can serve people better

Digital transformation typically has a core underlying imperative: to serve people better.

But as organisations migrate to cloud environments, data sovereignty, compliance and regulatory risk become more complex. Healthcare and public sector bodies must obey regional and national data protection laws and legislation, whilst all organisations must navigate evolving global regulations around privacy and security. 

Failure to meet these obligations can lead to steep penalties and loss of trust, ultimately undermining the goal of delivering more for the people who use your service. It’s therefore vital for organisations to recognise that compliance is a cornerstone of resilience and trust, not a burden.

Maximise this opportunity to optimise your cloud capabilities

Many organisations have moved to the cloud at a rapid pace, often under pressure to modernise their operations quickly. But when decisions are rushed, it’s easy for a move designed to create freedom to restrict it instead, and create new limitations:

• Essential factors like integration needs, provider diversity and long-term cost control can slip through the gaps.
• Hasty choices can lead to limited provider choice and lock-in to solutions that no longer reflect their evolving needs.
• It can be hard to switch direction when circumstances change, especially in sectors such as healthcare and the public sector, where scalability and resilience are non-negotiable. 

To avoid these pitfalls, organisations rethinking their cloud strategies should be clear about what they expect from a cloud platform, and avoid compromising on those requirements. The decision-making process can be streamlined, but it must be thorough and challenge cloud partner organisations to embed long-term value into their solutions. For example, it’s key to consider multi-cloud flexibility, transparent cost management, and alignment with business outcomes.

Demand a cloud service that delivers everything on your wishlist

The right cloud service will give your organisation greater agility, stronger service availability and better outcomes for the people who rely on it.

To succeed in securing this, organisations must adopt a holistic approach that includes modernising legacy systems, embedding robust cyber security, ensuring regulatory compliance and designing a cloud strategy for long-term agility. That means creating systems that deliver performance now and provide resilience for the future.

We built CGI Cloud Connect to help you achieve this with clarity and confidence. Our UK-based, secure cloud infrastructure reduces operational risk while supporting hybrid and multi-cloud strategies. We can help you accelerate cloud adoption and ensure full UK data residency, so your teams can focus on innovation rather than grappling with complexity and ongoing maintenance. We also adhere to public sector and commercial security certifications to ensure peace of mind in your supply chain.

Ready for the cloud service that can transform your operations?

Your leadership must act now. By taking decisive steps today, organisations can reduce risk, unlock new value and deliver secure, reliable and efficient services that earn trust and support growth. Resilience isn’t a destination; it’s an ongoing commitment.

We’re ready to help you make that commitment real. We bring deep experience in modernising technology estates across the public sector and other industries with heightened data security demands. If your organisation would benefit from systems that safeguard trust, improve service delivery and generate value, we’re here to make that happen.

Explore our CGI Cloud Connect brochure to learn how you can transform your infrastructure and operations. 

Or contact our cloud experts to start a conversation about your unique challenges and objectives.

References

1 Tech Monitor (2025) UK government admits over 25% of its digital systems are outdated 
2 UK Gov (2025) Cyber security breaches survey 2025
3 The Entrepreneur (2025) A Data Breach Reportedly Affecting 18 Million Customers Hits Jeep, Chrysler, and Dodge Parent Company
4 BBC (2025) Projections: The social internet