Despite security concerns, enterprises place sensitive data in the cloud

One third of enterprises place highly sensitive data in the public cloud even though most are wary of the implications on security and other business processes, according to Forrester Consulting.

Nearly half of respondents do not think their existing identity and access management (IAM) infrastructures will be able to support cloud applications and provide single sign-on (SSO).

While most enterprises are concerned about exposing data to the cloud, nearly a third of them already place highly sensitive data like regulated financial (34%) and healthcare information (29%) in SaaS apps. As for their preferred method for consuming cloud security, the top two choices – embedded in the cloud service (23%) and third-party on-premise solution (20%) – were evenly split.

The data collected shows that IT managers are living with a gap between cloud usage and corresponding cloud security. As solutions for managing cloud access mature, we anticipate IT departments will feel corresponding pressure to improve the fundamental processes of identity management and access management within their own organizations.

They must increasingly support business owners in a drive to take advantage of cloud-enabled and mobile-enabled business partnerships — and their ability to execute will be significantly affected by the ability of their IAM systems to adapt.

Forrester Consulting identified the following key IAM trends:

  • User Provisioning (61%) and SSO/Web Access Management (53%) are the two leading access control priorities for enterprises
  • 52% of enterprises are very concerned or somewhat concerned that their attestation and access request processes won’t fit with their cloud IAM solution
  • 52% were very concerned or somewhat concerned that their infrastructure is not up to date to support cloud IAM protocols
  • 48% of respondents were very concerned or somewhat concerned that their organization needs SSO to non-SAML or non-federated SaaS apps
  • 38% were very concerned or somewhat concerned that their existing IAM infrastructure is incompatible with their cloud IAM solution.
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