EDITOR ’ S QUESTION
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO COMPANIES STRUGGLING TO COPE WITH CLOUD COMPLEXITY ?
A report from Thales reveals Australian businesses find cloud privacy and data protection more complex to manage than on-prem . rapid growth in the prevalence and use of cloud services among businesses , research indicates many are still navigating how to protect the complicated environments they have created .
Over half of Australian businesses ( 53 %) believe cloud privacy and data protection is more challenging to manage than on-premises . Yet ,
16 % say their employees still use nothing other than passwords to access data stored in cloud or SaaS applications .
according to the 2022 Thales Cloud Security Report conducted by 451 Research , part of S & P Global Market Intelligence , increasingly complex cloud environments are on the rise .
Globally , cloud adoption and notably multi-cloud adoption , continues to rise . There has been an expansion in the use of multiple IaaS providers , with almost three-quarters ( 72 %) of businesses using multiple IaaS providers , up from 57 % the year before . The use of multiple providers has almost doubled in the last year , with one in five ( 20 %) respondents using three or more providers .
In Australia , a fifth ( 22 %) of businesses now use over 50 Software-as-a-Service ( SaaS ) applications , while one in 10 ( 10 %) uses over 100 . However , despite
Security challenges of multi-cloud complexity
With increasing complexity comes an even greater need for robust cybersecurity , yet in the past 12 months , over a third of Australian businesses ( 36 %) experienced a cloud-based data breach or failed audit .
When asked what percentage of their sensitive data is stored in the cloud , almost three quarters ( 73 %) said between 21 % to 60 %. However , only a quarter ( 23 %) said they could fully classify all data . Furthermore , 16 % say their employees still use nothing other than passwords to access data stored in cloud or SaaS applications .
Four in 10 ( 40 %) respondents admitted issuing a breach notification to a government agency , customer , partner or employees , which should be a cause for concern among enterprises with sensitive data , particularly in highly regulated industries .
Cyberattacks also present an on-going risk to cloud applications and data . Respondents reported an increasing prevalence of attacks , with almost half ( 45 %) citing an increase in ransomware , 43 % in malware and 40 % in phishing / whaling .
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