EDITOR’S QUESTION
WHAT STRATEGIES
SHOULD
ORGANISATIONS
HAVE IN PLACE WHEN
ADOPTING THE
PUBLIC CLOUD?
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M
cAfee, the device-to-cloud
cybersecurity company, has
announced its third annual cloud
adoption and security report, Navigating a
Cloudy Sky: Practical Guidance and the State
of Cloud Security.
The report outlines the current state of
cloud adoption, the primary concerns with
private and public cloud services, security
implications and the evolving impact of
Shadow IT for the more than 1,400 IT
professionals surveyed.
“Despite the clear prevalence of security
incidents occurring in the cloud, enterprise
cloud adoption is pressing on,” said Rajiv
Gupta, Senior Vice President of the Cloud
Security Business Unit at McAfee.
“By implementing security measures that
allow organisations to regain visibility
and the control of their data, businesses
can take advantage of innovative services
and accelerate their business with a more
informed approach to security in the cloud.”
of respondents now reporting they are using
a hybrid model. While private-only usage is
relatively similar across all organisation sizes,
hybrid usage grows steadily with organisation
size, from 54% in organisations up to 1,000
employees, to 65% in larger enterprises with
more than 5,000 employees. 40% of respondents also store one or
more of internal documentation, payment
card information, personal staff data or
government identification data. And about
30% keep intellectual property, healthcare
records, competitive intelligence and
network pass cards in the cloud.
Cloud-first is the strategy of most
organisations, but in cautious decline Security incidents still widespread
Cloud-first is an IT strategy that states
new projects should consider using cloud
technology first as opposed to on-premises
servers or software. According to the report,
cloud-first is the strategy for IT in many
companies and remains a primary objective.
Caution seems to have taken over for others,
as the number of organisations with a cloud-
first strategy dropped from 82% to 65% this
year. Despite the reported security incidents,
respondents with a cloud-first strategy still
believe that public cloud is safer than private
cloud. They understand the risks and yet
the more they know, the more confident IT
professionals are that cloud-first is the course
they want to be on.
Cloud services nearly ubiquitous
Prominently, one-in-four organisations
that uses Infrastructure-as-a-Service or
Software-as-a-Service has had data stolen
and one-in-five has experienced an advanced
attack against its public cloud infrastructure.
Malware continues to be a concern for
all types of organisations and 56% of
professionals surveyed said they had tracked a
malware infection back to a cloud application,
up from 52% in 2016. When asked how the
malware was delivered to the organisation,
just over 25% of the respondents said their
cloud malware infections were caused by
phishing, followed closely by emails from
a known sender, drive-by downloads and
downloads by existing malware.
Skills shortage decreasing
Sensitive data stored in the cloud
Almost all organisations are well into cloud
adoption. According to the survey, 97% of
worldwide IT professionals are using some
type of cloud service and are concurrently
working through issues related to visibility
and control.
The combination of public and private cloud is
also the most popular architecture, with 59%
28
INTELLIGENTCIO
The majority of organisations store some
or all of their sensitive data in the public
cloud, with only 16% stating that they store
no sensitive data in the cloud. The types of
data stored run the full range of sensitive
and confidential information. Personal
customer information is the most common,
reported by 61% of organisations. Around
The shortage of cybersecurity skills and
its impact on cloud adoption continues
to decrease, as those reporting no skills
shortage increased from 15 to 24% this
year. Of those still reporting a skills shortage,
only 40% have slowed their cloud adoption
as a result, compared to 49% last year.
Cloud adoption rates are highest in those
reporting the highest skills shortages.
www.intelligentcio.com