A new study from Thales has said that companies are struggling to protect their data due to digital transformation. Businesses looking to reap the benefits of digitization, such as improved process efficiencies and business intelligence, are also opening up new avenues of attack for cybercriminals. The survey of IT and security managers found that half of all corporate data is now stored in cloud environments, and 100% of respondents have acknowledged storing sensitive data in the cloud that is not encrypted Overall, nearly half (47%) of organizations reported experiencing a violation or failing a compliance audit in the past year.
Despite its competitive advantages, digital transformation has also introduced increased complexity to the IT environment. Enterprises use multiple Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) environments, as well as hundreds of SaaS applications at the same time. Four in ten respondents ranked complexity as the most significant barrier to effective data security. "As enterprises face increasingly complex cybersecurity challenges due to multi-cloud adoption and digital transformation, they need smarter and better ways to approach data protection," said Frank Dickson, vice president of cybersecurity at IDC. . "The use of robust solutions to discover, harden, prevent data loss and encrypt data provides an adequate foundation for data security, thus fulfilling the goal of ubiquitous cyber-protection," he advised. Tina Stewart, vice president of global market strategy for cloud protection and licensing activity at Thales, added that developments in areas such as quantum computing will bring new threats. The majority of respondents anticipate the imminent arrival of quantum computing in the enterprise, with 72% predicting that the technology will impact security and cryptographic operations in the next five years. "As 5G networks are deployed, IoT continues to develop, and quantum computing is getting closer to reality, companies must adopt a more modern data protection mindset," said Stewart. “The first step in protecting sensitive data is knowing where to find it. Once classified, this data must be encrypted and protected with a robust multi-cloud key management strategy. "