Poll flags up cloud security issues

This is according to a survey - of 200 UK-based large/medium-sized enterprises - conducted by polling agency Censuswide on behalf of Centrify, a provider of privileged access management (PAM) solutions.The findings also revealed that more than one in four (28%) companies have already been targeted by cloud hacking attempts since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Over one-third (35%) of the organisations that have adopted cloud are less than 80% confident that it is completely secure.

When questioned about security weaknesses in their companies, 45% agreed that it is the increasing amount of machine identities and service accounts, such as those used by servers and applications, that are becoming the largest exposure point for their organisation.

Almost one-third (31%) of business decision makers admitted that their development teams are more interested in getting around security than building it into the development pipeline, posing a potentially grim cyber security outlook for 2021.Kamel Heus, VP EMEA for Centrify, said: “Adapting to the Covid-19 pandemic has been a bumpy ride for many businesses and, in most cases, companies have had to adopt the public cloud in at least some capacity due to the level of scalability, availability, and efficiency it provides for distributed workforces.

“Whilst the common misperception is that cloud security is quite different to that of on-premises infrastructure, it is by no means less secure if common security protocols are followed, and security controls are applied.

“One core challenge posed by digital transformation is accurately verifying human and machine identities before granting access to systems, applications, and other high-value targets. Therefore, adopting cloud-ready privileged access management software is essential in protecting access to workloads in the public cloud, by granting access only when a requestor’s identity has been properly authenticated.”