All businesses share the same cloud security concerns

All organizations have the same key concerns regarding the security of their data in the cloud, according to a new report.

The study by security-as-a-service specialist CloudLock reveals that every organization shares five primary cloud cyber security concerns, regardless of industry. These are: account compromise, cloud malware, excessive data exposure, over-exposed personally identifiable information (PII) and payment card industry (PCI) data, and collaboration.

Excessive sharing is the main worry, with 83 percent of technology organizations concerned with ensuring access permissions to sensitive data are granted appropriately. This is followed by the K-12 education sector (77 percent), financial services (75 percent), healthcare (72 percent) and manufacturing (70 percent). Notably less focused on excessive sharing are retail (66 percent), government (60 percent) and higher education (59 percent).

Manufacturing industry shows the least concern for ensuring access permissions are granted appropriately for PII such as users' IDs, dates of birth, etc, (27 percent) and PCI (39 percent). Only 10 percent of technology firms are focused on protecting PII, but 41 percent are concerned with PCI. Higher education is the most concerned with protecting PII (77 percent) and PCI (61 percent), with the huge database of student records, as well as credit card and banking information tied to large spending areas such as tuition, administrative and research funds.

"While all industries are certainly evolving to make security a priority, each industry faces different risks and concerns that need to be addressed in a very specific and nuanced manner", says CloudLock CEO and Co-Founder Gil Zimmermann. "We're hoping this latest data will provide guidance for those who are wondering how they stack up against their peers, and possibly make them take notice of where they are falling behind when it comes to protecting critical information and assets."

The full report, with more information on specific industry sectors, is available to download from the CloudLock website.

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