Rapid deployment of digital transformation technologies could be leaving businesses at risk according to a new report which highlights a growing security gap among European organizations.
Of the companies surveyed in the 2019 Thales Data Threat Report – Europe Edition, almost a third (29%) said they had experienced a breach last year and just over half (55%) believe their digital transformation deployments are very or extremely secure.
Interest in digitally transformative technologies is high with 84 percent of organizations using or planning to use technologies including cloud, big data, mobile payments, containers, blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT). However, sensitive data is highly exposed in these environments and almost all of the organizations who participated in the study (97%) said they are using this type of data with digital transformation technologies.
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Senior vice president of cloud protection and licensing at Thales, Sebastien Cano praised European businesses digital transformation efforts while stressing the need for increased data breach prevention spending, saying:
“Across Europe, organizations are embracing digital transformative technologies – while advancing their business objectives, this is also leaving sensitive data exposed. European enterprises surveyed still do not rank data breach prevention as a top IT security spending priority – focusing more broadly on security best practice and brand reputation issues. Yet, data breaches continue to become more prevalent. These organisations need to take a hard look at their encryption and access management strategies in order to secure their digital transformation journey, especially as they transition to the cloud and strive to meet regulatory and compliance mandates.”
Securing multi-cloud environments
As more organizations turn to the cloud as part of their digital transformation strategies, concerns about the security of sensitive data stored there have grown among European businesses.
Thales' report found that the top three security issues for organizations using cloud are security of data if a cloud provider is acquired or fails, lack of visibility into security practices and vulnerabilities from shared infrastructure and data breaches or cyberattacks experienced by the cloud provider.
Businesses are working to overcome these concerns by using service provider managed encryption keys and SLAs in case of a data breach.
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