As per one of the recent reports, personal cloud storage can result in very costly data breaches that can also involve high-value IP. 45% of all the software applications that are used by different organizations are hosting in cloud environments, but very little portion of this data is visible to IT; to be precise the percentage is 22.5%, which is less than a quarter.
How Costly Can Data Breaches Get?
A recent study explored whether any kind of breach of data can result in any costly incidents. The multiplier effect in cloud also accounts the growth in cost and frequency of data breach on increase in usage of cloud and related uncertainty about how sensitive data present in cloud is.
As per one of the statements made by Sanjay Beri, CEO of Netskope, when most of the CSOs and CIOs of the companies today look deeper into their organizations, they see that the cloud apps have penetrated throughout their firm.
These corporate head-honchos also very clearly understand that 90% of these applications are not brought on-board by the corporate IT team; instead they are brought in either by individuals, groups or different departments. But, there seems to be very little that they can do about it.
If you happen to be the CIO of a company, working at a very high position and have realized that cloud has already gotten in deep in your company, but is not in your control, the million dollar question that remains unanswered is what you should, and can, really do about it. Waiting and hoping that nothing goes wrong, certainly isn’t a good choice to say the least!
Cloud Multiplier Effect
When we consider the cloud multiplier effect, it is evident that if there is a breach of data that involves critical information (or anything of very high value like source code or legal documents or product designs), and if the average cost is considered $2.99 million then the actual breach could go up to $4.16 million. As per data breach size of around 100,000 or even more number of compromised records, instead of around an average cost of say $2.37 million, the breach could even cost up to $5.32 millions!
Beri elaborated that any average enterprise today has more than 400 cloud apps and the customers are no more limited to using just DropBox or Box.com; instead they have more than 47 marketing applications, and around 27 cloud storage apps on an average. This is why the backups in any cloud report reflect that reach of cloud has clear penetrated deeper into each and every company.
However, what a company can really do is to reduce the number of unauthorized cloud apps, beef up the security levels, and if they’re using a third party hosting and cloud storage provider, they need to ensure that they pick a reliable one.