Bitglass Research: Employee Misuse and Access Control, Not Malware and Hacking, Dominate Public Cloud Security Concerns

CAMPBELL, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 12, 2015) - Bitglass, the Total Data Protection Company, today released its Cloud Security Spotlight Report. The report, based on a survey of more than 1,000 IT and IT security practitioners, found that overall, one third of respondents have experienced more security breaches with the public cloud than with on-premises applications. Misuse of employee credentials and improper access controls top the list of concerns about public cloud security. Overall, 90 percent of respondents still express concern over public cloud security.

Despite significant investments in security by SaaS providers, 36 percent of respondents believe that even major cloud applications such as Salesforce and Office 365 are less secure than on-premises applications, inhibiting many enterprises from more widespread adoption of cloud computing. Despite this fact, 38 percent of enterprises store intellectual property and 31 percent store customer data in the cloud.

"The report confirms that the cloud is increasingly part of enterprises' IT plans, with some 72 percent of organizations saying they are either planning to implement or are actively implementing cloud environments," said Nat Kausik, Bitglass CEO. "At the same time, organizations are concluding that SaaS applications are less secure, slowing widespread adoption of these technologies."

Key Findings of the Bitglass Cloud Security Spotlight Report Include the Following:

• Security of Public Cloud Apps: Despite SaaS providers' massive investments in security, 36 percent of respondents believe that major cloud apps like Salesforce and Office 365 are less secure than premises-based applications. Nearly one third of respondents have experienced more breaches in public cloud applications than premises-based applications and a staggering 90 percent continue to view security as a major issue of public cloud computing.
• Top Barriers to Cloud Adoption: Even with the major breaches of the last year, dominant security concerns involve misuse of employee credentials and improper access control, not malware and hacking. Topping the list are unauthorized access (63 percent), hijacking of accounts (61 percent) and malicious insiders (43 percent).
• Data Stored in the Cloud: Respondents said email (45 percent) and sales and marketing data (42 percent) top the list of corporate information stored in the cloud, followed by intellectual property (38 percent) and customer data (31 percent).
• Access Control, Encryption Coming into the Spotlight: The number-one method for closing the cloud-security gap is the ability to set and enforce consistent security policies across cloud apps. Encryption and access control are the most effective data protection technologies.
• Enterprise-Focused Cloud Apps Surging Ahead: In the battle of email titans, Microsoft's focus on enterprise-class features is paying off -- Office 365 has surged ahead of Google in the enterprise and is dominating future enterprise deployment plans (29 percent) versus Google Apps (13 percent). In the past year alone, the percentage of companies using Google Apps or Microsoft Office 365 cloud-based email and productivity suites increased from 23 percent to 42 percent.
  
  

Read the Full Report: http://pages.bitglass.com/Cloud-Security-Report-2015.html

Live Webinar: http://pages.bitglass.com/0415-Cloud-Security-Webinar.html

About Bitglass:
Bitglass (bitglass.com) delivers innovative technologies that transcend the network perimeter to deliver total data protection for the enterprise -- in the cloud, on mobile devices, on the network and anywhere on the Internet. Bitglass was founded in 2013 by a team of industry veterans with a proven track record of innovation and execution. Bitglass is based in Silicon Valley.