Cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) security exploits are a growing concern for enterprises as an increasing number of companies push deeper into the use of public and hybrid cloud services.
According to a new report and survey released by Black Hat, enterprise IT department concerns over attacks or exploits on cloud services, applications, or storage systems increased from 11 percent last year to 15 percent this year. At the executive level, concern increased only slightly from 7 percent last year to 8 percent this year.
The survey, which was conducted last month and tapped into 580 respondents set to attend the upcoming Black Hat USA conference, showed that despite the growing “concern,” enterprise IT departments showed increased confidence in security surrounding cloud services. The survey found just 5 percent of those questioned cited cloud security as the “weakest link in their IT defense, down from 12 percent last year.
IT departments and executives both agreed on growing concern over security breaches tied to IoT devices. For IT departments, concern increased from 9 percent last year to 12 percent this year, while executive concern surged from 3 percent to 5 percent.
IoT security garnered headlines last year following a connection between unsecured devices and a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack at domain name service (DNS) provider Dyn.
Those headlines may have led to the survey’s results showing fewer respondents felt there was too much attention paid to such attacks. The survey found 19 percent said IoT hacks received too much attention, down from 21 percent last year.
Cloud Security Spend Set to Increase
A recent Forrester Research report predicted global spending on cloud security platforms will grow at a 28 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years, hitting $3.5 billion in total spend by 2021.
Highlighting the market frenzy, the analyst firm cited a range of recent M&A activity in the space by the likes of Symantec, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Microsoft, Oracle, and Cisco. “These well-funded new entrants will help drive growth by incorporating cloud security solutions into their overall product offering,” noted Jennifer Adams, senior forecast analyst at Forrester.
