(CercleFinance.com) – 39% of companies were victims of a data breach in their ‘cloud’ environment last year, a figure up four points compared to the previous year (35%), shows a survey published Wednesday by Thales.
The ‘Thales Cloud Security Study’, conducted among approximately 3,000 IT and security professionals in 18 countries, shows that this upsurge in cyberattacks is taking place against a dramatic increase in the volume of storage of sensitive data in the ‘cloud’.
According to the survey, 75% of companies consider that more than 40% of their data stored in the cloud can be classified as sensitive, compared to 49% last year at the same time.
More than a third of respondents (38%) consider that ‘SaaS’ applications (dematerialized software) are the main target of hackers, followed by storage (36%).
Despite the reported increase in sensitive data in the cloud, the study reveals a weakness in the levels of encryption used, as only a fifth (22%) of IT professionals have encrypted more than 60% of sensitive data stored in a cloud .