The leading factor driving greater public cloud engagement or adoption today is digitally transforming enterprises.
The question is which one is more secure: Data on-premise or in the cloud?
Honestly, both come with security risks and vulnerabilities, with the rise in cloud migration, businesses believe there is more ease in storing and maintaining their data. The cloud migration maybe is an easy solution to their biggest problem but security should be their biggest concern.
Check out our blog on 4 cloud security threats that need your attention right now!
IT managers are finding it difficult to keep their applications and data safe in the cloud because of these two main reasons- Shortage of cybersecurity skills and Shadow IT.
What is Shadow IT?
This term refers to IT applications and infrastructure that are managed and utilized without the knowledge of the organisation’s IT department. For eg; you want to study the analytics of a certain website using an application that the IT department is not aware of, this can be a serious concern for a business. Below is a good example of how shadow IT works; (Source: Smartfile)
According to a McAfee study, the average enterprise uses 1,427 distinct cloud services and the average employee actively uses 36 cloud services at work. This contains confidential data like financial records and business plans, sensitive e-mails, payment and health information and more.
Which of these cloud services does the IT department have visibility of in the network?
Shadow IT is a challenge for many businesses. Understanding how to effectively meet changing business needs and create a better understanding between IT and the business is one of the keys to preventing Shadow IT, but also it is important to have visibility of everything that happens within the business environment and have alerts in place for any suspicious activity.
Shortage of cybersecurity skills
Organisations are facing a major challenge in keeping their staff up to date in the required work skills. This is due to them being overworked, they train and hire more junior staff which leads to inefficiency and poor quality deliverables and the inability to learn or use security technologies in the most effective way are some of the reasons why the skill gap is worsening.
According to an ESG report, the top three areas are Cloud security (33%) Application Security (32%) and Security Analysis & Investigation (30%).
We can offer many best practices in cloud security. Here is an overview, click here.
Our recommendation to you is, let’s start with a cloud security assessment understand where you stand in terms of security in your cloud and then recommend best practices that suit your business plan and create a roadmap for you to prioritize your risk in a cost-effective and timely manner.
Download our Office 365 Datasheet.
We do not want to preach about security but we want every individual in an organisation to practice it. If you would like to speak to our subject matter experts for further advice, call us: 1800 903 552 or e-mail us.