2014 will see a change in cloud security perceptions

CUPERTINO, USA: Skyhigh Networks, the cloud visibility and enablement company, predicts that 2014 will be a pivotal year for cloud computing. The days of cloud naysayers are over, but as cloud computing evolves into a mainstream technology, plenty of obstacles are left to clear before the cloud reaches its true potential - it is the beginning of a real security transformation.

Many of Skyhigh's predictions are based on the Cloud Adoption and Risk Report, which found that most organizations are flying blind as they embrace cloud services. In the report, Skyhigh data scientists analyzed data from more than 3 million users from more than 100 organizations who accessed thousands of cloud services.

The report found that when it comes to cloud services, IT tends to block what it knows (such as Facebook and ESPN.com), rather than blocking those services that present the greatest risks. This practice is most troubling with file-sharing sites. For instance, Box, the lowest-risk file sharing service, is blocked 35 percent of the time, but Rapidgator, a high-risk service, is blocked only 1 percent of the time.

"This problem isn't necessarily IT's fault. There were no unified cloud security tools and no consistent policies in place to manage the security, compliance, governance, and legal risks of cloud services," said Rajiv Gupta, founder and CEO at Skyhigh Networks.

"Our cloud usage analytics suggest that enterprises are taking action on the popular cloud services they know of and not on the cloud services that they don't know of and that pose the greatest risk to their organization. Lack of visibility into cloud service use and risk seems to be the crux of the problem."

Skyhigh forecasts that these behaviors will start to shift in 2014. IT must start vetting services based on risk, rather than familiarity. If IT doesn't get ahead of this trend, it will be forced to. High-profile breaches will force IT's hand, if IT doesn't adjust ahead of time.