The modern organization has a public cloud data security paradox to solve, says Amit Shaked, CEO, Laminar. Discover why existing security solutions fail to protect cloud data and how cloud native data security platforms can help security teams identify the highest data risks to take fast action.
IT and security teams want to impose governance and control over this vital resource. However, the fast pace of cloud adoption means that employees can now access data from anywhere. As a result, IT and security teams are often unaware of all the places where public cloud data is being accessed and stored.
Developers and data scientists are spinning up new services and data stores to support new innovations. So, it’s no surprise that 89%Opens a new window of organizations already host sensitive data in the public cloud.
There are some benefits of data fluidity. Employees are more productive when they can use data anywhere. Business users can easily access the data they need for analytics and reporting. Business technologists are able to innovate faster when they can provision new infrastructure as aservice (IaaS) and platform as aservice (PaaS) capabilities on demand. During the pandemic and beyond, streamlined, egalitarian access to data has enabled global teams to collaborate, problem solve, and rapidly evolve products and services to meet changing customer needs.
Public Cloud Data Security Is a Major Weakness for Most Organizations
However, there are also some significant downsides to the global availability of business and other data.
As developers spin up new data stores, security teams are struggling to keep up. Many of these data stores are unknown and unmanaged, meaning that this data isn’t copied, backed up, safeguarded, and actively managed by security teams. As a result, this unknown or “shadow data” has quickly become a prime target of adversaries and could easily become the reason for an organization’s downfall.
Just how great a problem is shadow data?
A recent survey of data security and governance professionals revealed that 93% of respondentsOpens a new window are concerned about shadow data, with 68% naming it as the primary concern in regard to protecting cloud data.