63% of enterprises using cloud, big data, IoT and container environments without securing sensitive data

Thales, a leader in critical information systems, cybersecurity and data security, announces the results of its 2017 Thales Data Threat Report, Advanced Technology Edition, issued in conjunction with analyst firm 451 Research. According to the report, 93% of respondents will use sensitive data in an advanced technology (defined as cloud, SaaS, big data, IoT and container) environments this year. A majority of those respondents (63%) also believe their organisations are deploying these technologies ahead of having appropriate data security solutions in place.

While concerns about data security in cloud environments remains high, they’ve dropped off since last year. In 2016, 70% of respondents voiced worries about security breaches from attacks targeting cloud service providers (CSPs); in 2017, 59% expressed fears. The second biggest concern, cited by 57% of respondents, is ‘shared infrastructure vulnerabilities’, followed by ‘lack of control over the location of data’ (55%). On the SaaS side, 57% of respondents report they are leveraging sensitive data in SaaS environments – up from 53% in 2016. When it comes to SaaS insecurities, respondents are most fearful about online storage (60%), online backup (56%), and online accounting (54%).

Garrett Bekker, Principal Analyst for Information Security at 451 Research says:

“Most major cloud providers have larger staffs of highly trained security professionals than any enterprise, and their scalability and redundancy can provide protection from the kinds of DDOS attacks that can plague on-premises workloads. Perhaps as a result of the recognition of these public cloud security realities, security concerns overall for public cloud are waning.”

Big data is a big topic of conversation – so it might be unsurprising to learn 47% of respondents are using sensitive data in big data environments. When it comes to security, respondents cite their top fear as ‘sensitive data everywhere’ (46%), followed by ‘security of reports’ (44%) and ‘privileged user access’ (36%).

IoT adoption is even higher, with 85% of respondents taking advantage of IoT technology and 31% using sensitive data within IoT environments.