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63% of Enterprises Lack Proper Big Data Security for IoT and Cloud

IoT and cloud adoption continue to rise despite security concerns.

Written By

Mar 17, 2017

Data protection and security company Thales has released the results of their 2017 Thales Data Threat Report, Advanced Technology Edition, issued in conjunction with analyst firm 451 Research. The study polled over 1,100 security professionals across the globe and discovered that IoT and cloud adoption continue to rise despite growing security concerns.

According to the report, 63 percent of those surveyed said their organizations are using the cloud, big data and the IoT without proper security. Some 93 percent said they will use sensitive data with those technologies and services this year.

Big data security

As for big data, 47 percent say they are using sensitive data in big data environments. Some 46 percent said their biggest fear was sensitive data being too accessible, followed by report security at 44 percent.

IoT adoption is rapidly expanding, with 85 percent of respondents saying they are using IoT technology in their organizations, and 31 percent saying those environments include sensitive data. Only 32 percent said they were extremely concerned about the security of their data. Approximately 36 percent of respondents said their top concern was protecting the data generated by the IoT, and 30 percent said they were concerned about properly identifying sensitive data.

“Adopters of advanced technologies are getting the message – as evidenced by the number of respondents expressing an interest in or embracing encryption. Putting an ‘encrypt everything’ strategy into practice will go a very long way towards protecting these powerful, yet vulnerable, environments,” said Peter Galvin, vice president of strategy at Thales.

Cloud security is also a concern, although the report found that it appears to be less of one in 2017. Of respondents to the survey, 59 percent said they are concerned about cyber attacks on cloud service providers, down from 70 percent in 2016. Roughly 57 percent said they were concerned about the security of shared infrastructure.

A final worrisome stat: 57 percent said they were using sensitive data in cloud/SaaS environment, up from 53 percent in 2017.