What is Cloud Data Protection?
2020 has started on a promising note and enterprises are actively investing in cloud data protection services and giving more emphasis on cloud-based work models and mobile services, given the risk that these technologies possess in terms of the possibility of data breaches. Come 25th May and enterprises in the European Union will have to ready with the appropriate protocols in place for data security in cloud computing to meet the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance deadline.
Some Statistics on Enterprise Investment in Data Protection
- 55% of the enterprises are planning to actively implement Data Loss Prevention (DLP) as a security initiative in the current year. This is an astonishing 106% increase from the previous year. But DLP has dropped to the eighth position from the top spot two years back and this is because the firms in the UK are opting for other security measures also.
- Identity Access Management (IAM) is the preferred choice for securing data in cloud computing for about 42% of the European firms and this is up by 58% when compared to the previous year.
- The deployment of planned network access control is up by 46% from the previous year and around 39% of the firms plan to implement it this year.
- In the light of Equifax and WannaCry breaches, 39% of the enterprises are actively seeking patch management and this is up 51% from 2017.
Cloud Security Protection Training to be Accorded Top Priority by Enterprises
The lack of security awareness and training had been the attributes of most of the data breaches in 2017.
- 43% of the enterprises in the European Union are planning to invest in user training and that is a 29% increase from 2017.
- The good fact is that there is a 99% jump for imparting user training and 46% of the polled enterprises plan to increase it.
- In 2017, 33% of the UK companies and 27% of the European enterprises took the value of user training seriously. When enterprises train their staff to be vigilant and responsive to phishing attacks even in simple tasks like regular messaging, then it can prove beneficial to cyber security.
- 31% of the organizations have shown a keen interest in investing in Single Sign-On (SSO) which is a 49% increase from the previous year. SSO helps employees with a single password to access their data across multiple networks and apps instead of remembering many usernames and passwords.
- The network security has seen a minute dip of 1% from the previous year with 31% of the firms planning to go for it.
- 35% of the enterprises are in for the next-generation firewalls and this is a 44% increase from the previous year. This means that the enterprises are still latched on to the traditional security technologies that may not provide the needed security for the modern-day breaching methods.
- 10% of enterprises will be investing in deception technology. This new process has evoked a keen response with a 97% jump from the previous year.
Overall Rise in the Spending on Cloud Data Protection Solutions by Enterprises
The above statistics show that owing to the GDPR compliance deadline, there has been a steady increase in the spending on data protection measures by the enterprises. But, this spending is here to stay particularly so because of the stringent policy measures adopted and the fines for non-compliance of GDPR. What is surprising though is the adoption of traditional security technologies that offer limited solutions and may not be able to protect data given the ever-evolving data theft practices. But, security experts feel that this is going to change now as more enterprises adopt a risk-based approach to security.
No doubt, some of the European firms are in no mood to shift to newer security measures. But the renewed interest in IAM, SSO, and other such solutions, which are a part of the Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) solutions suites means that enterprises are ready to face the challenges of GDPR compliance and thus secure their confidential data.