Virtually all business cloud apps lack enterprise grade security

Blue Coat Systems analyzed apps for their ability to provide compliance, data protection, security controls and more. Of the 15,000 apps analyzed, it was revealed that 99 percent do not provide sufficient security, compliance controls and features to effectively protect enterprise data in the cloud.

Shadow data still a major threat

Their report revealed that shadow data, unmanaged content employees store and share across cloud apps, continues to remain a major threat, with 23 percent of it being broadly shared among employees and external parties. They also found that organizations are running 20 times more cloud apps than they estimate, with most using an average of 841 across their extended networks.

“The vast majority of business cloud apps we analyzed do not meet enterprise standards for security and can put companies at risk for compromise even though virtually every enterprise uses them,” said Aditya Sood, PhD and Director of Security and Elastica Cloud Threat Labs at Blue Coat. “This is troubling when you think about the financial risks faced by enterprises due to insecure or non-compliant apps. Understanding which cloud applications your employees are adopting and using is an important step to identifying which apps are business ready and which apps need to be replaced with more secure alternatives.”

GDPR: A global concern

With the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the European Commission has provided a standard for cloud application security and compliance. With the rapid adoption of cloud apps around the globe, there is heightened concern with regard to the business readiness of many apps in the European sector.

Additional findigs

• 12 percent of broadly shared documents and files contain regulated information and confidential data such as source code and legal information.
• 95 percent of enterprise-class cloud apps are not SOC 2 compliant.
• 63 percent of risky user activity in the cloud indicates attempts to exfiltrate data.
• 37 percent of suspicious cloud activity indicates attempts to hack into user cloud accounts.
• 71 percent of business cloud apps do not provide multi factor authentication.
• 11 percent of enterprise cloud apps are still vulnerable to one or more major exploits such as FREAK, Logjam, Heartbleed, Poodle SSLv3, Poodle TLS, and CRIME.

“Adopting new cloud applications can increase a business’s productivity and enable organizations to become more agile, but with rapid migration to the cloud comes a significant number of security and regulation challenges,” said Mike Fey, President and COO at Blue Coat Systems. “An effective and comprehensive security solution must provide granular visibility and control over cloud apps and meet new cloud security regulations like the EU’s GDPR to qualify as enterprise-grade for organizations doing business in the cloud.”