What risks is your data exposed to? This cloud security study by McAfee provides detailed insights. The provider of security software surveys 1,400 IT decision-makers every year on security issues in their organisations. Impressively, 97 percent of the organisations surveyed rely on cloud services, with 88 percent storing sensitive data in cloud servers.
To be clear, data protection and security risks are not only issues for cloud services. Even organisations that rely on conventional in-house solutions repeatedly report incidents related to their IT infrastructure. What is changing, however, is the nature of the risks.
Viruses, Trojans and DDoS attacks are classic security breaches where external intruders modify or steal data, and may even completely paralyse IT operations. Neither in-house IT solutions nor cloud services are completely immune to these types of attacks. However, with the growing use of cloud services, the spectrum of data protection and security risks is changing.
Cloud technology users are exposed to different risks than are in-house IT departments. The organisations surveyed by McAfee report the following risks and incidents:
- 30 percent complain about a lack of transparency regarding how data is processed within a cloud service.
- 26 percent have experienced theft of data processed in cloud data centres by a malicious actor.
- 25 percent see room for improvement when setting up access authorisations for sensitive data.
- 23 percent of IT managers fear shadow IT through cloud services outside their control.
- 23 percent confirm a lack of know-how and competence to guarantee cloud security.
The second point is a challenge for any organisation. External actors with malicious intent are a problem that all IT managers have to deal with – whether they run their IT themselves or use cloud services.