EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Cloud transformation successes, with security slips

In the US, 42% of the labor force is now working from home full-time. On account of newly remote workforce, organizations have quickly adopted cloud computing technologies. Cloud usage has accelerated in every domain. In terms of digital transformations, this has enabled companies to achieve more in a two-month time-frame than they had intended to accomplish within the next five years.

A 2020 study discovered that 87% of companies plan to expedite their cloud migration in the post-pandemic world, and 68% of companies currently use two or more cloud providers. Despite newfound agility, these types of rapid leaps forward can come with hidden costs. The accelerated transition to cloud technologies has opened up security gaps and led to expanded attack surfaces.

Cloud security is a major concern

According to a 2020 Cloud Security Report, 52% of organizations maintain that the risk of a breach is higher in cloud environments than in on-premises environments. Three quarters of companies report that they are “very” or “extremely” worried about cloud security.

In the past, organizations have shown that they take cloud security seriously, investing an average of 27% of their budget on it. And in the future, when it comes to security spend, 60% of organizations say that they plan to increases their investments.

Given the frequency of cloud breaches across the first half of 2020, companies are right to be concerned about more cloud breaches. Over 3.2 billion records were exposed in the ten largest breaches of this year to date.

What are the biggest cloud security threats?

Sixty-eight percent of companies report that they are most concerned about misconfigurations.  Other prominent concerns include unauthorized access (58%), insecure interfaces (52%) and account hijacking (50%).

For an in-depth discussion of the most significant cloud security threats right now, click here.