[Infográficos] Riscos para empresas europeias que adotam uma estratégia de nuvem

As perspectivas econômicas para a região europeia como um todo são positivas. Analistas da IDC estão prevendo que o mercado europeu de nuvem atingirá 80 bilhões de euros até 2020. É uma das razões pelas quais o mercado está atraindo tanto interesse de provedores de plataformas de serviço de nuvem. Hoje, gigantes globais como Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure e Google Cloud Platform competem ao lado de fornecedores locais como ElasticHosts no Reino Unido para ganhar participação no mercado. Dito isso, o mercado está longe de ser fácil. Atualmente, apenas cerca de 1 em cada 5 (21%) empresas europeias adotaram uma estratégia de computação em nuvem, com o Reino Unido e as regiões nórdicas liderando o caminho.

Neste artigo, quero discutir algumas das principais preocupações de segurança que os profissionais de TI da Europa compartilharam com a Netwrix no nosso recente Cloud Security In-Depth Report.

Os resultados esclarecem o que impede as empresas de expandirem o uso de serviços na nuvem e indicam o que precisa acontecer para tornar a nuvem mais segura e atraente para elas.

Tendências positivas

Vamos começar pelos pontos positivos. As empresas europeias estão mais confiantes do que suas contrapartes na América do Norte em sua capacidade de gerenciar a cloud security: 38% dos entrevistados afirmam que os serviços de nuvem melhoraram sua segurança geral, enquanto 18% dizem que isso não faz diferença para sua postura de segurança. Em contrapartida, apenas 26% dos profissionais de TI na América do Norte concordam que a adoção da nuvem melhorou sua segurança geral.

No entanto, o aumento da pressão de novas regulamentações como o GDPR significa que as empresas europeias não podem se dar ao luxo de descansar sobre os louros.

Another positive is that 59% of IT pros get senior management support for cloud security initiatives. It looks as though companies are finally starting to recognize the strategic role of the IT department within the business.

Top concerns

Possible data access by unauthorized parties is the top concern for 71% of respondents. According to 44% of respondents malware infection is another important issue. In North America the proportion of survey participants worried about malware is much higher due to the frequency of ransomware attacks there. Although European companies have experienced fewer attacks there have been some notable hits. Maersk, the Danish logistics company, suffered from NotPetya ransomware, as did NHS in England.

The third placed concern at 43% – only just behind malware – is lack of visibility into user activity in the cloud.

Top security risks

Only around 1-in-5 organizations (21%) claim to be able to see what their users get up to in the cloud, while the ability to monitor IT staff activity is only slightly better at 32%.

Closer inspection of the data reveals that an inability to monitor insider behavior properly is pretty common. Companies are very aware how risky this is: 49% of respondents regard their own employees as the biggest security threat.

The problem is exacerbated by a tendency among European companies to operate tiered applications that encompass on- and off-premise environments. According to IDC up to 40% of EU firms build up applications in hybrid IT environments.

Yet very few implement the technology and processes necessary to ensure their long-term viability. Instead the growing number of cloud locations makes vigilance harder and compounds the risk of unusual activity going unnoticed.

Planned security measures

The top security measures cited by participants in the Netwrix 2018 Cloud Security Report underline how seriously companies take human error and threats from within. Most try to minimize the risk of errors or illicit behaviors through training (57%) and tightening security policies (54%).

Nevertheless, such measures can only go so far. For better control over user activity IT departments also need systems that provide clear visibility into changes and unauthorized access attempts across the entire IT environment for risk mitigation.

Cloud security trends

We found plenty of evidence that use of cloud services is growing in popularity. Among those we spoke to most companies (72%) have plans to move more data to the cloud, while 41% are ready to expand their use of cloud.

It’s easy to see why the Cloud is so attractive. It saves money and increases a company’s agility. Additionally, the range of services offered by cloud providers far exceeds what most SMBs could achieve by themselves. The global Cloud giants are also playing their part. AWS, for example, is training up 100,000 people in cloud across the EU during 2018. The aim is to make it is easier for public services and commercial enterprises to make the transition to Cloud services.

Yet, companies still do not trust cloud enough to move their entire infrastructure to the cloud. Less than 1-in-4 (24%) are ready to do so while those planning a cloud-first strategy are very much in a minority (31%).

Conclusion

In summary, European companies adopting a Cloud strategy face a number of internal and external risks. However, provided they bring their security policies into line with best practice for Cloud computing and gain more visibility into users’ activity across the IT environment as a whole there is no reason why the risks should be any different to on premise.

A tighter regulatory climate through measures like GDPR is unlikely to slow the rate of cloud adoption any more than it will slow economic growth. All it means is that companies will need to take extra care to ensure customer data stored in the cloud has the right protection.

Finally, Cloud providers themselves could do more to educate businesses about the additional security measures they should be taking instead of simply promoting the features and benefits of their own services.

To read the full report please click here.

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