Majority of companies do not protect sensitive data in the cloud

Cloud usage is on the rise. Companies are ensuring further spread in the process. 57 per cent of global respondents say they use two or more cloud providers. Almost a quarter (24 per cent) say they house the vast majority of their workloads and data in the cloud. According to a recent survey by McKinsey & Company, companies in all parts of the world have accelerated their move to the cloud by three years compared to the pace before the corona crisis. So there is a substantial shift in cloud usage. From mere data storage, usage is shifting to environments where data is used for transactions and supporting day-to-day business operations.

According to the survey, 21 per cent of companies say the majority of all data in the cloud is sensitive data. Forty per cent experienced a data breach in the past year. This is similar to the Netherlands, at 44 per cent. There are some common trends regarding the solutions companies deploy to secure their cloud infrastructure. Fifty per cent say that multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a core component of their security strategy. However, the fact is that only 17 per cent of respondents have encrypted more than half of the sensitive data they store in the cloud. Of Dutch companies, this is even less (14 per cent).

Even when companies secure their data with encryption, 34 per cent of all organisations worldwide leave the management of keys to service providers. They do this instead of taking control themselves. If legions of organisations fail to adequately protect their data with encryption, it becomes even more important to reduce the number of potential access points. However, almost half of all business decision-makers (48%) admit that their organisation does not have a zero trust strategy in place. A quarter are not even considering it.

Companies share concerns about the increasing complexity of cloud services. Almost half (46 per cent) of all global respondents say that managing privacy and data protection in the cloud is more complex than in on-premises environments. Dutch companies struggle with this even more (56%).

Hybrid models are widely used by organisations that do not fully switch to the cloud. 55 per cent of these companies express a preference for an approach that transfers data and applications to the cloud without any customisation. This is because the cloud has become a more integrated part of the business infrastructure.

Sebastien Cano, senior vice president Cloud Protection & Licensing Activities at Thales: "Across the world, organisations are struggling with the growing complexity associated with the increasing use of cloud solutions. A robust security strategy is essential to keep data and business processes safe. Today, almost every business relies on the cloud to some extent. Therefore, it is crucial that security teams are able to map, protect and control all data."

Fernando Montenegro, Principal Research Analyst, Information Security at 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, added from the 2021 Thales Global Cloud Security Study: "Protecting customer data is always a top priority. Organisations should take a hard look at their strategies and approaches to proactively protect data in the cloud. This includes gaining an understanding of specific technologies, such as encryption and key management, and shared responsibility for security between cloud providers and their customers. In the face of increasingly comprehensive data protection and data sovereignty regulations, it is crucial that organisations have a clear understanding of their responsibility for information security. They need to make clear decisions about who is responsible for their sensitive data and who can access it."

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