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Two thirds of SMBs believe their data is unsafe in the cloud

Two thirds (61%) of small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) believe that their data is unsafe in the cloud, with almost a third (29%) saying that they have suffered a breach since moving to the cloud for storage, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm IS Decisions.

It reveals that exactly half of IT decision makers believe that cloud storage is inherently less safe than on-premises storage, with almost a third (27%) saying that since moving to the cloud for storage, it’s been harder to stop employees who are leaving the organisation from stealing sensitive information before they leave.

The report Under a cloud of suspicion draws on research conducted with 300 heads of security within SMBs based in the UK, US and France who are using Dropbox for Business, Google Drive, Box and Microsoft OneDrive. It examines the current perceptions of cloud storage security among organisations and highlights a clear need for work to be done to ensure the safety of company data living in the cloud.

According to the report, 31% say that since moving to the cloud for storage, it’s been harder to detect unauthorised access, while 21% admit to keeping their most sensitive data stored on on-premises infrastructure because they don’t trust its security in the cloud.

Commenting on the research, IS Decisions founder and CEO François Amigorena said: “With cloud-based storage, the ease of sharing data among teams coupled with the simplicity of integrating your storage with other cloud applications is significantly increasing the chance of unauthorised access — causing major security concerns for IT teams who are struggling to detect misuse.

“What’s more is that security becomes even more challenging for those SMBs who use a mixture of on-premises and cloud because it’s much harder to track files and folders across both environments without a single consolidated view.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by François Amigorena .