Compliance issues lead cloud security concerns

Auditing, compliance and data privacy issues are considered to be the top cloud security challenges facing organisations, according to a global survey from CipherCloud.

The results of a survey of Global 2000 organisations from North America, Europe, APAC and Latin America shows that 64% identify audit/compliance/privacy as the top challenge.

Nearly a third named unprotected data in the cloud as their primary concern, while 2% cited malware protection for documents and 2% selected a shortage of secure cloud file-sharing technologies.

“Organisations are harnessing cloud computing to more effectively compete in the global economy with faster time to market and cost efficiencies,” said CipherCloud founder and CEO Pravin Kothari.

“At the same time, the headwinds of privacy legislation in [the four regions] make the case for data-centric protections in the cloud. Our research indicates that compliance factors are galvanising organisations, particularly in healthcare and finance, to fortify their data defences in the cloud.”

The healthcare and finance industries are accordingly leading the way in adopting cloud data protection technologies, with 38% and 25% of organisations respectively in these segments doing so.

Finance and healthcare face strict data privacy requirements, and protected 100% of personally identifiable information as a result.

Globally, organisations’ cloud data protection efforts are more focused on data encryption than tokenisation by a margin of 81% to 19%. But in APAC, the two technologies are being adopted in equal measure.