INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Business trust
in cloud services
security decreasing,
says report
Information security (InfoSec) professionals trust the
cloud even less now than they did last year, despite
efforts by cloud-service providers to tighten security,
according to the results of the second annual Cloud
Security Survey conducted by the SANS Institute.
C
loud computing has been
a dominant trend in the
Middle East and North Africa
(MENA) in recent years and leading
IT research firm Gartner projects
that the cloud services market
for the region will grow 18.3%
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to reach $879.3 million in 2016.
However, even as the uptake of
cloud continues to increase, security,
which has always been a major
hurdle to cloud adoption, remains
a challenge. According to the SANS
survey, 62% of respondents said they
are concerned that unauthorized
outsiders could access data stored on
public cloud services, representing a
20% increase over the previous year.
“IT professionals in the Middle
East clearly understand the host of
benefits that cloud offers, but their
concerns arise due to the lack of
visibility and control over data in the
cloud,” said Ned Baltagi, Managing
Director, Middle East & Africa at SANS.
“Business dynamics have necessitated
IT scalability and flexibility and cloud
computing presents a convincing and
cost-effective solution. But IT teams
need to work with line of business
managers to find new technologies
and policy approaches to reduce
the risk.”
The survey also found that
organisations believe their ability to
identify and remediate cloud data
breaches has reduced. In 2015, 33%
of respondents said they lacked the
tools and low-level access to usage
data that would allow them to
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