O F T H E

S T A T E

C L O U D

2015

A recent study by the Cloud Security Alliance investigated how companies are

using cloud apps

What they found may surprise you

Employees are racing to use cloud apps, but their companies are more hesitant when it comes to moving to the cloud

The average employee actively uses 28 cloud apps at work

But most companies are

MOVINGWITH CAUTION

11% Not a priority

45% Moving with caution

33% Full steam ahead

15% Early stages of investigation

That’s because IT professionals read the same news as everyone else

So it’s not surprising that security is the top barrier to cloud projects

Concern about the security of data 73%

Concern about regulatory compliance 38%

Loss of control over IT services 38%Knowledge and experience of both

IT and business managers 34%Concern over compromised

accounts or insider threats 30%Concern over business continuity

or disaster recovery 28%

After Target lost $162 million in a data breach, security is not just an IT concern

20%Not Sure

19%No

61%Yes

Security of data in the cloud is an executive-level and board-level concern at a majority of companies

(Is cloud security an executive or board-level concern at your company?)

The challenge is that most cloud usage is in a company’s blind spot

With so many free and low-cost apps available, employees are bringing their own apps to work

And using them to store company data

In many cases, employees do not evaluate the security controls of these apps, or even read the terms and conditions

I agree to the terms & conditions.

Accept

Producing what’s called

Shadow IT

Shadow ITnoun | /ʃædoʊ ɑɪ tʰi/

Information technology employees bring to work without the knowledge or permission of the IT department.

say they don’t know how many cloud apps are in use at their company...

72% of IT professionals

say they don’t know how many cloud apps are in use at their company...

72% of IT professionals

72% Don’t know,but want to know

20% Don’t know, and don’t care

8% Know

But they want to know

Regardless of how many apps there are, employees want more

of IT professionals receive requests from business users for new cloud apps each month

79%

These are the most frequently requested cloud app categories

(Within IT professionals who receive requests, percentage of professionals who receive requests for each category)

80%File sharing and collaborationBox, Dropbox, Google Docs, Office 365, etc.

41%CommunicationHipChat, Skype, Webex, Yammer, etc.

38%Social mediaFacebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.

27%Content sharingFlickr, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.

20%Enterprise content managementSaperion, OpenText, SpringCM, etc.

20%DevelopmentCodehaus, Github, MSDN, SourceForge, etc.

20%MarketingHubspot, Mail Chimp, Marketo, etc.

18%Sales productivityClari, ClearSlide Infer, RelatelQ, etc.

16%Business intelligenceBirst, Tableau, QlikView, Teradata, etc.

Despite security concerns, cloud apps make employees

18.8% more productive

They also reduce IT cost by

15.1%

With cloud apps

Without cloud apps

And crucially, these companies also grow

than those that don’t take advantage of the cloud

19.6% faster

To balance these benefits with potential risks, companies are investing in security

8% Know

Cloud security tops the list of security priorities(Percent of IT professionals who rate projects “very important”)

Firewall/proxy

Mobile device managemenet

Endpoint protection

Cloud security 42%

Intrusion prevention 41%

35%

29%

29%

Log management 23%

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Brought to you by

The Cloud Encryption Handbook:

Alexandra Boldyreva , Ph.D. Computer Science, M.S., B.S. Applied Mathematics

Paul Grubbs, B.S., Mathematics, Computer Science

ENCRYPTION SCHEMES AND THEIR RELATIVE STRENGTHS ANDWEAKNESSES

http://bit.ly/CSASurvey2015

Download the full report to get all the findings

Cloud Adoption Practices & Priorities Survey Report

January 2015