Cloud Security Improving: Results of the 2019 SANS State of Cloud Security Survey

The state of cloud security is improving, albeit slowly, according to results of the 2019 SANS State of Cloud Security survey to be released by SANS Institute on May 1, 2019. "Organizations are continually evolving in their use of cloud services, looking to the cloud for procurement, management and other functions," says Dave Shackleford, SANS senior instructor and analyst. "Along with that movement, organizations are placing more and more sensitive data in the cloud and facing a variety of security concerns." More respondents' organizations experienced unauthorized access to cloud environments or cloud assets by outsiders: 31% in 2019 compared with just 19% in 2017. And concern about that access has remained high, with 56% of 2019 respondents listing it as a concern. The concern for data breaches by cloud provider personnel dropped from 53% in 2017 to 44% this year, which may indicate some growth in trust in the providers. Other major concerns included inability to respond to incidents (52%), lack of visibility into what data is being processed and where (51%) and unauthorized access to data from other cloud tenants at 50%.