Security Gap Foreshadows Breach Risks as Cloud Adoption Tops 80 Percent

Bitglass, the Next-Gen CASB company, today released the 2018 Cloud Adoption Report, its fourth such study, which examines cloud adoption in more than 135,000 organisations around the globe. The report corroborates what is now broadly apparent –  the flexibility, productivity and cost savings benefits of cloud apps have fueled widespread adoption in every industry. Surprisingly, the report finds that the adoption of cloud security technologies lags cloud adoption, leaving many at risk of a data breach.

The report finds that while 81 percent of organisations globally now use cloud apps, just 25 percent of organisations have adopted single sign-on (SSO), which is typically the first, most basic cloud security technology implemented. SSO combined with multi-factor authentication lowers the risk of phishing and password hacks.

“Cloud adoption hits new highs year after year as organisations worldwide have come to trust platforms like Office 365 and AWS, but it is surprising to see that far fewer organisations have invested in basic technologies like SSO to protect their data in the cloud,” said Rich Campagna, CMO, Bitglass. “The disparity suggests that data breaches will continue to plague organisations.”

In addition to tracking SSO usage, Bitglass’ 2018 report reveals adoption rates for a host of different cloud-based tools, including Office 365, G Suite, AWS, Slack, Box, and Salesforce.

Key Findings:

• The analysis of more than 135,000 organisations indicates that global cloud adoption has topped 81 percent – a 37 percent increase since 2016 and a 238 percent increase since 2014 when Bitglass produced its first Cloud Adoption Report.
• Just 25 percent of organisations use SSO solutions to authenticate their users. In terms of organization size, large enterprises use SSO more than two times as often as small businesses (44.1 percent compared to 17.9 percent). By industry, education is the leading adopter of SSO at 40.3 percent, while retail (15.9 percent) has one of the lowest SSO adoption rates.
• Office 365 usage surpassed G Suite usage in 2016 and has proceeded to stretch its lead since then. Currently, Microsoft’s offering boasts more than twice as many deployments as Google’s. While G Suite usage has remained steady at 25 percent, Office 365 usage has grown from 34.3 percent in 2016 to 56.3 percent.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as the go-to infrastructure as a service (IaaS) solution. 13.8 percent of companies worldwide are using AWS with the technology industry leading the way at 21.5 percent adoption.
• In just a few short years, Slack has risen to become one of the most widely adopted cloud applications in the enterprise, in use at a staggering 42.9 percent of enterprises.

Methodology

Using internally developed technologies, the Bitglass research team scanned the cloud across more than 135,000 companies to identify the cloud services that they use. The analysis included cloud productivity suites like Office 365 and G Suite, messaging apps like Slack to file sync and share apps like Box, as well as single sign-on, a basic cloud security technology.

To view the complete Bitglass 2018 Cloud Adoption Report, visit: https://pages.bitglass.com/FY18BR-CloudAdoption_LP.html