The Cloud Security Alliance today released Cloud Usage: Risks and Opportunities. Survey results from IT and security professionals worldwide indicate they perceive their organization has significantly fewer apps running in the cloud than reported by vendors and researchers.
One of the most significant statistics drawn from the survey is 54 percent of IT and security professionals believe 10 or fewer cloud-based applications run in their organization, and 87 percent indicated 50 or less—with a weighted average of 23—ran in their organization’s cloud.
In contrast, common vendor and research reports count an average of 500 cloud apps present per enterprise.
"We found these results particularly interesting and at the same time concerning," said Jim Reavis, CEO of the CSA. "It's hard to control what you can't see. If you are only seeing one tenth of your actual cloud usage, it's impossible to put cloud policies in place to protect users and data. This tells us that cloud app discovery tools, along with analytical tools on cloud app policy use and restrictions, are very important in the workplace, especially when it comes to sensitive data being used by cloud applications.”
The full report can be found here.
