Member Article

UK organisations falling short of public cloud security requirements – HeleCloud report reveals

A new report, entitled Is Your Business Ready for the Ultimate Stress Test? concludes that UK businesses are facing the ultimate stress test in protecting their Public Cloud architecture, as the pandemic sees new pressures applied, both in usage and security threats.

The survey discovered that while confidence in public cloud security has risen significantly among UK businesses, there is a clear misunderstanding in what Public Cloud offers in terms of data protection.

Despite experts reporting a major spike in data breaches since the pandemic began, only a third of UK businesses have assessed their Public Cloud architecture in the past six months. This falls short of the continuous assessment advocated by leading Cloud providers and their partners, leaving UK businesses open to data leaks and attacks.

There was, however, some disparity in how confident people in different roles were about how well their businesses were making use of the tech. While ninety-one percent of security leaders felt that their chosen Public Cloud architecture was being used to its full potential, over three quarters of business leaders agreed or strongly agreed with this statement.

The survey also confirmed that a lack of understanding around public cloud security requirements was, in part, due to a demand for expert cloud and security skills within UK businesses. In fact, almost half of UK small and medium businesses, as well as enterprise companies, believe human error to currently be their biggest vulnerability. Surprisingly, seven per cent of UK businesses do not think they have got any vulnerabilities at all, suggesting a lack of expertise in identifying and managing Public Cloud dangers.

The survey also found that your understanding of this demand and its impact depends on who you are in the business. While sixty-eight per cent of security leaders strongly agreed that their teams possess the necessary specialist skills to keep their businesses safe from data breaches, only forty-five per cent of IT leaders and thirty-eight per cent of business leaders felt the same way.

Frustratingly for many, the skills gap cannot simply be solved by hiring more people. Forty per cent of UK businesses noted a time line of between four and six months to hire people with the specialist Cloud experience needed.

The report concludes that when it comes to security, you are only as strong as your weakest link. To tackle this, it suggests a holistic approach to security is required as no area can be ignored. However, the report warns that businesses must not attempt this alone. It recommends partners with specific public cloud security competencies under their belt should always be first on the list when it comes to solving security and compliance challenges in complex Amazon Web Services architectures.

According to the report, businesses do not know, what they do not know. This means that if an expert in public cloud security is not present, the architecture will not be held up to objective scrutiny and their exposure is much higher than they think or are able to tolerate.

To manage the risk of huge data losses, the report suggests that businesses look to public cloud partners, allowing access to expertise on how to best safeguard their public cloud environments without the need to wait six months to get it.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by HeleCloud .