Understanding Cloud Data Security and Priorities

October 22, 2022

Survey Creation and Methodology The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to widely promote best practices for ensuring cybersecurity in cloud computing and IT technologies. CSA also educates various stakeholders within these industries about security concerns in all other forms of computing. CSA’s membership is a broad coalition of industry practitioners, corporations, and professional associations. One of CSA’s primary goals is to conduct surveys that assess information security trends. These surveys provide information on organizations’ current maturity, opinions, interests, and intentions regarding information security and technology.

BigID commissioned CSA to develop a survey and report to better understand the industry’s knowledge, attitudes, and opinions regarding data security in the cloud. BigID financed the project and co-developed the questionnaire with CSA research analysts. The survey was conducted online by CSA in July 2022 and received 1663 responses from IT and security professionals from organizations of various sizes and locations. CSA’s research analysts performed the data analysis and interpretation for this report.

The goals of this study were to understand the following:
• Approaches to cloud data security
• Priorities for cloud data security
• The current state of sensitive and dark data
• Concerns about data breaches
• Difficulties of regulatory compliance

In general, organizations are lacking confidence in their ability to secure data in the cloud, with 39% reporting high confidence levels. Over half of the organizations (57%) report medium to low levels of confidence. This lack of confidence becomes even more evident when discussing sensitive data. Forty percent of organizations indicate that 50% or less of their sensitive data in the cloud has sufficient security. Only 4% report sufficient security for 100% of their data in the cloud. This finding suggests that organizations may generally have some confidence in their ability to secure data, but are struggling when it comes to sensitive data.

See the full survey here.