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European organisations have false
sense of (cyber) security, despite
over half suffering a breach
New insights from the 2020 Thales
Europe Data Threat Report reveal
that European organisations have
a false sense of security when it comes to
protecting themselves, with only two-thirds
(68%) seeing themselves as vulnerable,
down from nine in 10 (86%) in 2018.
This confidence flies in the face of the
findings of the survey of 509 European
executives which reveals over half (52%)
of organisations were breached or failed a
compliance audit in 2019, raising concerns
as to why a fifth (20%) intend to reduce
data security spend in the next year. The
findings come as workers across Europe
are working from home due to COVID-19,
often using personal devices that don’t have
the built-in security that office systems do,
significantly increasing risk to sensitive data.
Across the board, companies are racing
to digitally transform and move more
applications and data to the cloud; twofifths
(37%) of European countries stated
they are aggressively disrupting the markets
they participate in or embedding digital
capabilities to enable greater enterprise
agility. A key aspect of this transformation
is in the cloud becoming the leading data
environment. Nearly half (46%) of all
data stored by European organisations is
now stored in the cloud, and with 43% of
that data in the cloud being described as
sensitive, it is essential that it is kept safe.
As more sensitive data is stored in cloud
environments, however, data security risks
increase. This is of particular concern given
that 100% of businesses surveyed report
that at least some of the sensitive data they
are storing in the cloud is not encrypted.
Only 54% of sensitive data in the cloud is
protected by encryption and even less (44%)
is protected by tokenisation, highlighting the
disconnect between the level of investment
companies are making into cybersecurity
and the increasing threats they face.
Multi-cloud adoption complicates
data security
Despite the multitude of threats, businesses
feel that the complexity (40%) of their
environments is holding their data security
capabilities back. Multi-cloud adoption is
the main driver of this complexity; fourfifths
(80%) of businesses are using more
than one IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service)
vendor, while a third (29%) have more than
50 SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications
to manage. Businesses also identified a lack
of budget (30%), staff to manage (28%)
and organisation buy-in/low priority (25%)
as other top blockers.
“Businesses are continuing to race towards
Digital Transformation and many are
increasingly reliant on complex cloud
environments, without taking a Zero
Trust approach. Data is more at risk than
ever, while organisations are unwittingly
creating the perfect storm for hackers by not
implementing the security basics,” said Rob
Elliss, EMEA Vice President for Data Security
Solutions at Thales. “Unfortunately, this will
result in increasing problems, particularly in a
world where working remotely will be part of
the new normal, unless companies can step
up to the plate when it comes to keeping
data safe.” •
DATA IS MORE
AT RISK THAN
EVER, WHILE
ORGANISATIONS
ARE UNWITTINGLY
CREATING THE
PERFECT STORM
FOR HACKERS BY
NOT IMPLEMENTING
THE SECURITY
BASICS.
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