37% of Enterprises Experienced Cloud Data Breaches over the Last 12 Months: Thales Report

While cloud and notably multi-cloud adoption remains on the rise, over 37 percent of respondents from India have experienced a cloud-based data breach or failed audit in the past 12 months, up from the previous year (33 percent), according to the 2022 Thales Cloud Security Report, conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence

Showcasing a rapid cloud adoption, organizations worldwide were using an average amount of 110 SaaS applications in 2021, compared with just eight in 2015. There has been a notable expansion in the use of multiple IaaS providers, with almost three-quarters (72 percent) of businesses globally using multiple IaaS providers, up from 57 percent the year before. The use of multiple providers has almost doubled in the last year, with one in five (20 percent) of global respondents reporting using three or more providers.

Despite their increasing prevalence and use, businesses share common concerns about the increasing complexity of cloud services with 40 percent of IT professionals from India agreeing that it is more complex to manage privacy and data protection in the cloud. Additionally, the journey to the cloud is also becoming more complex, with the percentage of respondents reporting that they’re expecting to lift and shift, the simplest of migration tactics, dropping from 55 percent in 2021 to 24 percent currently. This stands true for respondents in India as well with the figure standing at 23 percent presently.

“Businesses are still learning and adapting to the security challenges of operating in the multi-cloud ecosystem. With the increased use of the cloud, data across the world, including from India, has become vulnerable to breaches. This emphasizes the importance of using strategies like encryption, key management, multi-factor authentication, and tokenization among others,” said Ashish Saraf, VP and Country Director – India, Thales.

When asked what percentage of their sensitive data is stored in the cloud, 46 percent of respondents in India said between 21-60 percent.

When it comes to securing data in multi-cloud environments, IT professionals from India view encryption as a critical security control. 65 percent of respondents cited encryption and 56 percent stated key management as the security technologies they currently use to protect sensitive data in the cloud.

However, when asked what percentage of their data in the cloud is encrypted, only one in ten (11 percent) of respondents said between 81-100 percent is encrypted. Additionally, key management platform sprawl may be an issue for enterprises. Globally, only 10 percent of respondents use one to two platforms, 90 percent use three or more, and almost one in five (17 percent) admitted using eight or more platforms.

Further, it is encouraging to see signs of enterprises embracing Zero Trust. Almost a third of respondents in India (31 percent) said they are already executing a Zero Trust strategy, 29 percent said that they are evaluating and planning one and, 20 percent said they are considering it. This is a positive result, but there is certainly still room to grow.