According to the McAfee’s study, 26 percent of files in the cloud contain sensitive data, an increase of 23 percent year-over-year.
McAfee’s research study titled Enterprise Supernova: The Data Dispersion Cloud Adoption and Risk Report, describes the broad distribution of data across devices and the cloud, highlighting critical gaps for enterprise security. Seventy-nine percent of companies surveyed store sensitive data in the public cloud. While these companies approve an average of 41 cloud services each, up 33 percent from last year, thousands of other services are used ad-hoc without vetting. In addition, 52 percent of companies use cloud services that have had user data stolen in a breach. By leaving significant gaps into the visibility of their data, organizations leave themselves open to loss of sensitive data and to regulatory non-compliance.
According to the study, 26 percent of files in the cloud contain sensitive data, an increase of 23 percent year-over-year. Ninety-one percent of cloud services do not encrypt data at rest; meaning data isn’t protected if the cloud provider is breached.
Seventy-nine percent of companies allow access to enterprise-approved cloud services from personal devices. One in four companies have had their sensitive data downloaded from the cloud to an unmanaged, personal device, where they can’t see or control what happens to the data.
Collaboration facilitates the transfer of data within and between cloud services, creating a new challenge for data protection. Forty-nine percent of files that enter a cloud service are eventually shared. One in 10 files that contain sensitive data and are shared in the cloud use a publicly accessible link to the file, an increase of 111 percent year-over-year.
Ninety-three percent of CISOs understand it’s their responsibility to secure data in the cloud. However, 30 percent of companies lack the staff with skills to secure their Software-as-a-Service applications, up 33 percent from last year. Both technology and training are outpaced by the rapid expansion of cloud.
