How can we split public cloud adoption from data security events?

The growth in cloud infrastructure far outpaces the general IT spend for the third quarter in a row, indicating that cloud adoption continues to be a primary focus for organizations across the globe.Now, as millions more employees across the globe are forced into remote work environments in this first half of 2020, there’s no doubt cloud adoption will continue to accelerate at a rapid rate. Public cloud has been a vital infrastructural component for helping business adapt to changing global landscape even before the global Coronavirus made it a necessity. But there are other figures that tend to rise in tandem with public cloud adoption that IT stakeholders should be tracking just as carefully – an increase data security vulnerability.

The alarming data breach figures over the last several years document how traditional security practices like encryption have failed to keep pace with rapid cloud adoption. A recent study by Varonis Labs revealed 53% of organizations had over 1,000 sensitive files exposed at any given time, and with the cost of a single breach averaging $2.6 million, the financial repercussions organizations face threaten to undermine the flexibility and scalability benefits cloud promises to begin with. Now, data security vulnerability figures have already begun to climb even further as dependence on public cloud infrastructure skyrocketed amid Covid-19-mandated work from home requirements.

According to Acronis’ Cyber Protection Week 2020 Survey, 91% of IT Professionals rank data breaches a top IT concern – and for good reason considering their prevalence. With roughly half of data being exposed due to a lack of encryption or due to misconfiguration, these numbers will continue to skyrocket with cloud adoption unless additional steps are taken to secure data before it’s sent to public infrastructure.

To decouple the joint trajectory of cloud adoption and data breaches, organizations are seeking solutions that further obfuscate data before it even reaches the cloud. ShardSecure’s Microshard™ technology was developed with this exact need in mind. Microsharded data is broken into single-digit byte which are then distributed to multiple locations in the cloud and/or on-premises. This renders the data unreadable to anyone who might access it nefariously. Microsharding drastically reduces the sensitivity of data, which not only mitigates the financial and reputational consequences of a data breach, but also reduces the compliance burden organizations who plan to move sensitive data to the cloud.

In an age where avoiding data vulnerabilities caused by cloud misconfiguration altogether has proved nearly impossible, taking steps to reduce the sensitivity of data itself is the best protection. If you’re interested in learning more about how to secure your organization’s data through Microsharding, contact us at info@shardsecure.com.