Cloud is the biggest security risk facing businesses today

Cloud adoption is at an all time high but continued pressure to migrate 100 per cent to the cloud is raising security concerns and new research from Kaspersky Lab has revealed that more than half (58 percent) of CISOs cite uncontrolled cloud expansion as their top security concern.

The security firm surveyed over 250 IT security leaders to learn more on the views of CISOs regarding cybersecurity.

Through the use of multiple cloud platforms within a hybrid cloud infrastructure, businesses can deliver their products and services faster though cloud computing also brings its own security challenges. This is especially true when the cloud infrastructure is hosted by a third-party.

The skills shortage has also made it more difficult to manage complex IT environments as hybrid cloud adoption requires specialists with the necessary skills to configure and manage security for a business' IT infrastructure. Of those surveyed, 38 per cent claimed that it has become increasingly difficult to recruit the specialists needed to deal with this 'cloud zoo'.

Safeguarding cloud data

Vice President of Global Sales at Kaspersky Lab Maxim Frolov provided further insight on the company's findings, saying:

“There’s no denying that with the business benefits it brings, cloud is a key part of the strategic digital transformation journey for many enterprises. The use of cloud is growing fast, and businesses are not going to be put off adoption because of security concerns. It’s therefore vital that resilient security is also quickly and effectively implemented, to support this rapid adoption.

“Safeguarding data and workloads in the cloud environment, in addition to supporting the native security capabilities of a cloud platform is crucial. Protection layers should therefore include: the capability to monitor application behavior and ban any suspicious activity; prevent exploits by using the latest threat intelligence; and find and automatically patch vulnerabilities, to safeguard data and workloads moving across cloud infrastructure, from threats. The best solutions also provide orchestration capabilities, so that IT teams can control what workloads are being accessed and processed, on and off-premise.”

As is the case when adopting any new technology, security must be a first priority and hopefully Kaspersky Lab's research encourages businesses to think twice before migrating to the cloud without a well-thought out plan in place.