Concerns for Cloud security? Best look internally - blueAPACHE

2015

Sixty-three percent of IT professionals cite security as a top concern with public cloud according to Tech Buyer Snapshot. A separate survey of 300 IT security professionals conducted last year showed the percentage of respondents who preferred to keep sensitive corporate data on-premises rather than in the cloud was eighty percent. While perceptions of cloud security may be improving, the real threat to cloud security may not have anything to do with the service provider. At the recent Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2016 in Orlando, Daryl Plummer presented on humanity and technology. He stated that through 2020, 95 percent of cloud security failures will be the customer’s fault. While organisations still harbour security concerns about the use of public cloud services, only a small percentage of security incidents impacting enterprises using the cloud have been due to vulnerabilities that were the provider’s fault. Cloud providers invest heavily in security, prevention and recovery. Their business relies on it. More often than not, customers will look to blame their service provider for breaches and data loss before assessing internal policies, procedures and security – despite studies showing that the leading cause of data loss is human error. Plummer believes this will lead to customers seeking cloud access security brokers products to manage and monitor their use of SaaS and other forms of public cloud services. Security is key to successfully leveraging the many benefits of the cloud, especially with the lack of clarity on data sovereignty, new data retention laws and recent changes to the Privacy Act. Despite the suggestion that security issues will likely be caused by in-house issues, we strongly encourage organisations to perform due diligence on their cloud providers to ensure they meet the changing compliance and regulatory requirements faced in Australia. To better understand cloud security (and the processes you can put in place to better secure your cloud connectivity), contact the blueAPACHE Cloud team.