As organizations in the Middle East increasingly adopt cloud services, business leaders worry that their cloud-security measures are falling short.
Running in the Cloud The worries arise as organizations in the Middle East accelerate their cloud adoption.
More than three-quarters of organizations in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates run high-value applications in the cloud, and almost all store sensitive data in the cloud.
The combined cloud adoption in the UAE and Saudi Arabia is setting the pace for growth in the region with a projected compound annual growth rate of approximately 24% from 2022 to 2027, says Manish Ranjan, senior research manager for IDC's software, cloud, and IT services group, who notes that hyper-scale cloud providers, such as Amazon and Google, have expanded their data centers in the area.
Unique Approaches to Cloud Security Each country has taken its own approach in adopting cloud services, with cybersecurity concerns and geopolitics resulting in country-specific trends.
Data sovereignty regulations and de-globalization trends, for example, have led to the deployment of multi-cloud infrastructures that can support regional regulations and business mandates, according to the March research report, The Future of Cloud Security in the Middle East.
Business and government leaders have taken cybersecurity seriously with security the top factor in choosing a cloud provider, with 43% of companies prioritizing security, compared to 19% prioritizing cost, according to the report.
Attacks Ramp Up Against Cloud Despite prioritizing cloud security, organizations remain worried.
An increasing amount of business operations happen in the cloud, resulting in attackers more likely targeting cloud services, and cloud-focused exploitation nearly doubling last year.
Most critically, nearly half of organizations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE fear that a cloud breach would severely disrupt business operations, according to Illumio's data.
Compared to their Middle Eastern peers, fewer organizations in other regions are worried that their cloud security falls short, but slightly more believe that a cloud breach would make normal operations impossible.
While the average organization worldwide lost nearly $4.1 million to cloud breaches in the last year, the losses were more modest for firms in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, about $2.3 million, the report found.
The lesson in the trend is not necessarily to slow deployment of cloud services, but to understand security controls and each parties' responsibilities for security, says Jim Reavis, CEO and co-founder of the Cloud Security Alliance.
Attackers are moving naturally to the cloud, not because of any weakness, but because the cloud is increasingly where companies are keeping their critical assets, Reavis says, who noted that every corporate member of the CSA from the Middle East has joined in the last five years.
This Cyber News was published on www.darkreading.com. Publication date: Wed, 06 Dec 2023 16:35:09 +0000