Study: Wary Enterprises Still Place Sensitive Data in the Cloud

Enterprise Security Services -- Concerns about the Cloud

Even though they are wary of the implications on security and other business processes, one third of enterprises place highly sensitive data in the public cloud, according to a new study from Symplified.

A press release from Symplified also says that the study – Access Management for the Extended Enterprise: A Timely Challenge, conducted by Forrester – shows that nearly half of the respondents do not think their existing identity and access management (IAM) infrastructures will be able to support cloud applications and provide single sign-on (SSO).

And while most enterprises are concerned about exposing data to the cloud, nearly a third of them already place highly sensitive data like regulated financial (34 percent) and healthcare information (29 percent) in Security as a Service (SaaS) applications. Their top choices for consuming cloud security were embedded in the cloud service (23 percent) and third-party on-premise solution (20 percent).

Other findings include:

User provisioning (61 percent) and SSO/Web Access Management (53 percent) are the two leading access control priorities for enterprises.
Fifty-two percent of enterprises are very or somewhat concerned that their attestation and access request processes won’t fit with their cloud IAM solution.
Fifty-two percent were very or somewhat concerned that their infrastructure is not up to date to support cloud IAM protocols.
Forty-eight percent were very or somewhat concerned that their organization needs SSO to non-SAML or non-federated SaaS apps.
Thirty-eight percent were very or somewhat concerned that their existing IAM infrastructure is incompatible with their cloud IAM solution.