Intelligent CIO Middle East Issue 53 | Page 26

TRENDING The rush for Digital Transformation and the security fallout With input from 1,723 executives with responsibility for, or influence over, IT and data security around the world, this year’s threat report went deeper into the specific security challenges resulting from the ‘DX Era.’ The report revealed that the more digitally transformed, the more likely an organisation is to be breached. While organisations pursuing DX are capturing competitive advantages, the worldwide rush to implement disruptive technologies is creating new vulnerabilities resulting in data breaches and compliance audit failures. According to the report, 45% of organisations in the top two DX categories, Software-As-a-Service (SaaS) and social media, experienced a breach in the past year. Multi-cloud is the new normal but a top barrier to data security Companies are using multiple Infrastructure- As-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-As-a- Service (PaaS) environments, as well as hundreds of SaaS applications. More than eight in 10 companies (81%) are using more than one IaaS vendor, 81% have more than one PaaS vendor and 11% have more than 100 SaaS applications to manage. As more data migrates to the cloud, security becomes more complex. Nearly 40% of respondents rate complexity as their top perceived barrier to implementing data security, down slightly from 44% last year. Quantum threat on the horizon As a breakthrough technology with applications in various industries, the report also draws attention to the muchanticipated impact of quantum computing. The report reveals that within the next five years, 72% of organisations believe quantum computing power will affect their data security operations. 26 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com