Cover your SaaS! It’s time to get serious about cloud security
Executive Summary
Is everyone really moving to the cloud? Cloud providers and investment gurus are outdoing themselves to give that impression. Promises of:
1. cost savings,
2. happier employees, and
3. cutting-edge performance
Turn companies such as Box and Cloudera into ballyhooed acquisitions or potential IPO candidates. If the hype is to be believed, throngs of IT leaders are ready to shutter their server rooms and move their infrastructures to the cloud, leaving traditional hardware and software manufacturers choking in the rubble.
But is the reality of cloud adoption living up to the hype? We decided to run the numbers and see. We separated the cloud “dabblers” from those showing signs of strategic cloud adoption, and give our recommendations for how cloud customers should proceed in the midst of the public cloud fiascos that continue to plague the industry.
Read on to find out more about how to take and deploy this first-ever insight in your organization.
Real-World Numbers Tell the Story
Traditional survey responses can include inherent lag times and other discrepancies, so for this study we analyze publicly available, real-world traffic data. This inaugural cloud adoption report takes a sampling of 81,253 businesses across a range of industries and company sizes—the largest data set available on this topic. We zero in on email and productivity suites, such as Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps, under the assumption that companies using those applications are most likely to embrace the cloud across their organizations rather than deploying tactical, employee-driven tools.
Results:
Strategic, company-wide cloud adoption is taking hold as new technologies to secure cloud applications gain a greater foothold. But even in the midst of continual cloud fiascos, security concerns persist as the elephant in the room, with most cloud customers continuing to ignore basic security mechanisms.
Conclusions:
After analyzing these numbers, we believe that for the cloud to reach its incredible potential, business cloud customers must address security gaps that represent significant threats, especially to large organizations and those in heavily regulated industries.
