37% of firms in India experienced a Cloud data breach in past year: Report

Nearly 37 per cent of Indian organisations have experienced a Cloud-based data breach or failed audit in the past 12 months, up from the previous year (33 per cent), a new report showed on Wednesday.

Nearly 46 per cent of organisations in India store most of their sensitive data in the cloud, according to the "2022 Thales Cloud Security Report", conducted by 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Despite their increasing prevalence and use, businesses share common concerns about the increasing complexity of cloud services with 40 per cent of IT professionals from India agreeing that it is more complex to manage privacy and data protection in the cloud.

"Multi-Cloud environments are becoming the new norm for businesses in India. The journey to the cloud is also becoming more complex. Businesses are still learning and adapting to the security challenges of operating in the multi-cloud ecosystem," said Ashish Saraf, VP and Country Director-India, Thales.

"It is important for organisations to constantly adapt to this rapidly changing environment and stay on top of the evolving trends of the industry," he added.

Despite security concerns, cloud adoption however continues to grow across India and the globe.

In 2021, organisations worldwide were using an average amount of 110 software as a service (SaaS) applications, compared with just eight in 2015.

Currently, multi-cloud adoption is accelerating with 72 per cent of organizations globally using multiple Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers - a significant jump from 57 per cent last year.

Cyber attacks also present an ongoing risk to cloud applications and data.

When it comes to securing data in multi-cloud environments, IT professionals from India view encryption as a critical security control.

"Nearly 65 per cent of respondents cited encryption and 56 per cent stated key management as the security technologies they currently use to protect sensitive data in the cloud," the report mentioned.

However, when asked what percentage of their data in the cloud is encrypted, only one in 10 of respondents said between 81-100 per cent is encrypted, the report added.