More than one in two organizations that store customer data in the cloud experienced security breaches in 2020, a new study found.
The high incident rate has prompted more than 60 percent of organizations to remove sensitive material from the cloud if they haven’t already done so, Netwrix said in its newly released 2021 Netwrix Cloud Data Security Report surveying 937 IT professionals worldwide using private and public cloud services to store their data.
In 2020, insider data theft negatively impacted company valuation (33%), the Irvine, California-based data security provider said. By comparison, external hacking led to customer churn (35%) and loss of competitive edge (35%). The survey also found that the most common types of cloud security incidents were phishing (40%), ransomware or other malware (24%), and accidental data leakage (17%). More than half of the study’s participants said that additional budget was needed to fix security gaps that led to the security incidents.
In terms of data security challenges, a shortage of IT staff was cited by 52 percent of the survey’s respondents followed by constricted budget (47%) and lack of cloud security expertise (44%).
“These hardships force security teams to operate in the ‘new day, new breach’ reality,” said Ilia Sotnikov, Netwrix product management vice president. “To identify, detect and protect against threats in the cloud continuously, organizations should invest in solutions that help prioritize risks and automate security routines, such as tools that provide data discovery, activity auditing and alerting,” he said. “That way, security teams can better manage risks, respond to the attacks promptly and minimize negative business outcomes.”
Additional survey findings include:
