Nearly three quarters (73%) of UK enterprises currently using cloud say that cloud security threats are a top concern over the next year.

This is according to a survey commissioned by Auxilion involving 100 IT decision makers in UK enterprises with over 250 employees, which also found that 72% of respondents currently using the cloud described a potential cloud outage as ‘catastrophic’ for their business.

Despite the concern, the shift to the cloud continues to accelerate. The data revealed that 90% of IT decision makers surveyed are now using cloud, and 88% intend to migrate more infrastructure and applications over the next 12 months.

“What the survey data highlights is the delicate balancing act enterprise leaders need to manage,” Donal Sullivan, CTO, Auxilion, commented on the results.

“As they migrate more to the cloud, potential security threats increase and so do the chances of outages, which can cause major disruption to organisations. This means businesses need to be more proactive when it comes to securing their data and responding to incidents.”

“We’ve all read about high profile outages that have damaged organisations in many ways – especially reputationally and financially. The impact can be felt for many years, which is why enterprises require the right technologies and partners to ensure security is a number one priority.”

Recommended reading

• New Palo Alto Report Exposes Worrying Cloud Security Gaps
• Cloud Security Incidents Plaguing Organisations
• Cloud Complexity and AI are Too Much for Traditional Security

A recent report from Palo Alto concurred with these recent findings, showing worrying gaps in cloud security as the data technology is rapidly adopted across industries.

The research found that organisations are introducing over 300 new cloud services each month, contributing to about a third of high or critical cloud exposures.

These security failures can be especially damaging: research from Cado Security revealed that nearly nine in ten of surveyed IT security decision makers admitted that their organisation had suffered damage before containing and investigating cloud security incidents.