New survey results from security company Trend Micro confirm that the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation for 81% of organisations in Australia and New Zealand (A/NZ). However, this increase in cloud adoption may leave business data insecure.

Ashley Watkins, Trend Micro's VP of Commercial for the A/NZ region said: “It’s evident organisations in Australia and New Zealand are embracing digital transformation and adopting the cloud at an accelerated rate.

“While this progression is great to see, our findings indicate there is a clear disconnect in the understanding of the cloud shared responsibility model which could result in exposure to reputational and financial damage.”

We're told the survey "confirms a simple misconception that can lead to serious security consequences. While cloud infrastructure is secure, customers are responsible for securing their own data – which is the basis of the Shared Responsibility Model for cloud.

"Nearly all (86%) of A/NZ respondents say they are confident they understand their cloud security responsibility, but 99% also believe their cloud service provider (CSP) offers sufficient data protection.

"Of those surveyed, less than half (47%) can say they are ‘very’ confident in securing their organisation’s part of the cloud-based responsibility model. This suggests that there may be significant coverage gaps and confirms that the shared responsibility is not understood. Trend Micro Research has found that misconfigurations are the number one risk to cloud environments, which can happen when companies don’t know their part of the Shared Responsibility Model."

The surveyed A/NZ organisations seem to be confident in their cybersecurity posture in the cloud, as:

• 40% claim the acceleration in cloud migration has increased their focus on security best practices
• 85% believe they are fully or mostly in control of securing their remote work environment
• 82% believe they will be fully or mostly in control of securing their future hybrid workplace.

Despite this confidence, many respondents in A/NZ also admitted to experiencing security related challenges:

• 55% said that security is a “very significant” or “significant” barrier to cloud adoption
• Patching (41%), setting consistent policies (39%), and lack of integration with on-premise security technologies (36%) were cited as the top three day-to-day operational headaches of protecting cloud workloads
• Lack of integration with on-premises security technologies (43%), data privacy (38%) and compliance (28%) were reported as significant barriers in migrating to cloud-based security tools.

Watkins added: “There are plenty of solutions an organisation can consider implementing to ensure they are tapping the power of cloud adoption and building a solid foundation for digital transformation. Despite the challenges faced by A/NZ organisations, there are ready, easy-to-use products available on the market which will address privacy concerns, support compliance, and ultimately avoid unnecessary risk."

Security solutions for cloud environments rated most important to responding organisations were network protection (27%), Cloud Security Posture Management (27%) and Container protection (18%) tools.

Trend Micro tells us it commissioned Sapio Research to interview 2565 decision makers in 28 countries, across several industry sectors, and from organisations of all sizes, with a focus on large enterprise.