Security of data in transit, the main security concern of CIOs who migrate data to hybrid cloud

Companies are slowly joining the bandwagon with hybrid cloud adoption, but Gartner estimates that it’s still three to five years from going mainstream. By the end of 2015, only 15 percent of enterprises have adopted it so far, although the demand for hybrid cloud is estimated to be growing at a compound rate of 27% a year, outpacing overall IT market growth, according to researcher MarketsandMarkets, cited by The Journal. The company said it expects the hybrid cloud market to reach $85 billion in 2019, up from $25 billion in 2014.

An October 2016 Bitdefender survey of 250 IT decision makers in the United States in companies with more than 1,000 PCs points out that IT decision makers say that the main security concern when migrating data to a hybrid model is the security of data in transit (66%). Security of data at rest (60%), security of backups and snapshots (54%), and the increased attack surface (53%) also top their list of security concerns.

Security specialists advise that, when opting for a hybrid cloud solution, an organization must first perform an analysis of the type of data it is handling and evaluate it based on its level of sensitivity – both for the company and its clients. Critical, personal and private data related to intellectual property must be stored on premise, with access to it available only to authorized personnel.

As security of data in transit or at rest is CIOs’ main concern when shifting companies’ IT architectures towards that mix the latest in public cloud services with their own private data centers, Bitdefender security specialists also recommend that any data transfer between the client and the cloud service provider needs to be encrypted to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks that could intercept and decipher all broadcasted data. More than that, any data stored locally or in the cloud should be encrypted to make sure cybercriminals cannot read it, in case of data breaches or unauthorized access.

Previous surveys have shown that:

With cloud adoption becoming a reality for an increasing number of companies, most companies admit having experienced cloud security incidents – almost half of the reported incidents are related to unwanted external sharing and involve access from unauthorized devices.

For many companies the primary reasons for selecting a particular cloud provider are efficiency (41 percent of respondents) and cost (37 percent), followed by reputation and customer service. Security comes only fifth.

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Methodology

This survey was conducted in October 2016 by iSense Solutions for Bitdefender on 250 IT security purchase professionals (CIOs/CEOs/ CISOs – 26 percent, IT managers/directors – 56 percent, IT system administrators – 10 percent, IT support specialists – 5 percent, and others), from enterprises with 1,000+ PCs based in the United States of America.

More than half of the organizations surveyed are from the IT hardware and software / electronic and electrical engineering industries, while 24 percent are from manufacturing, 6 percent from transportation, 4 percent are providers of telecommunication services, 4 percent are utility or public services companies, and the rest come from construction, retail, distribution, media or other industries.

Some 62 percent of the organizations surveyed have over 3,000 employees, 14 percent between 2,000 and 2,999, and 24 percent between 1,000 and 1,999.

Regarding IT infrastructure development in the organizations, 39 percent of the companies have 3,000+ computers, 21 percent between 2,000 and 2,999, and 40 percent between 1,000 and 1,999. The average proportion of employees working on computers in the organizations surveyed is 74 percent.

Geographically, a third of the organizations are in the West, 30 percent in the North-East, 28 percent in the South and 11 percent in the Mid-West.

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