Cloud adoption within the financial services sector was analyzed in a recent report by Skyhigh Security. The new findings show that while financial services firms — including banks, insurance companies, brokerage houses and credit card companies — tend to have the highest degree of security maturity, they also face the greatest threats.

The report highlights how organizations have embraced the cloud in response to the pandemic-fueled movement toward remote work. From 2019 to 2022, the average number of public cloud services utilized by financial services organizations jumped from 20 to 31 — an increase of over 50%. And although the financial services industry stores a similar amount of sensitive data in the public cloud as other sectors (61%), it skews toward storing more confidential internal information, such as employee records and payment card information.

Eighty-two percent of the financial services organizations surveyed in the report claimed that Shadow IT hinders their ability to keep data secure — in part due to a lack of skilled security staff who can track their organizations’ cloud computing trends. Ninety-six percent of respondents in financial services acknowledged these talent shortages as a problem compared to 92% of respondents across all industries.

However, the sector also takes more precautions than other industries to reduce the risks associated with data loss by migrating users to IT-sanctioned apps, conducting regular auditing and implementing data classifications and policies to monitor and prevent data leakage.

Read the full report here.