Gemalto and Ponemon study reveals disparities in adoption of cloud security

While the vast majority of global companies (95%) have adopted cloud services, there is a wide gap in the level of security precautions applied by companies in different markets. Organizations admitted that on average, only two-fifths (40%) of the data stored in the cloud is secured with encryption and key management solutions.

The research’s results show that organizations in the UK (35%), Brazil (34%) and Japan (31%) are less cautious than those in Germany (61%) when sharing sensitive and confidential information stored in the cloud with third parties. Germany’s lead in cloud security extends to its application of controls such as encryption and tokenization. The majority (61%) of German organizations revealed they secure sensitive or confidential information while being stored in the cloud environment.

Over three quarters (77%) of organizations across the globe recognize the importance of having the ability to implement cryptologic solutions, such as encryption. This is only set to increase, with nine in 10 (91%) believing this ability will become more important over the next two years - an increase from 86% in 2017.

Despite the growing adoption of cloud computing and the benefits that it brings, half of global organizations believe that payment information (54%) and customer data (49%) is at risk in the cloud. Due to this perceived risk, almost all (88%) believe that the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), will require changes in cloud governance, with two in five (37%) stating it would require significant changes. The vast majority (81%) believe that having the ability to use strong authentication methods to access data and applications in the cloud is essential or very important.

The research, called “2018 Global Cloud Data Security Study”, was conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of Gemalto with 3,285 IT and IT security practitioners surveyed across the US (575), UK (405), Australia (244), Germany (492), France (293), Japan (424), India (497) and Brazil (355).