Cloud has become an integral part of several Indian organisations as they deploy cloud to meet their growing computing requirements. A study by Tenable, an exposure management solutions company, found that cloud infrastructure as the biggest source of cyber risk in organisations.

“Over 70 per cent of cybersecurity and IT leaders in India view cloud infrastructure as the greatest source of cyber risk in their organisation. The perceived risks stem from the use of public cloud (36 per cent) and (or) multi-cloud (23 per cent.) and private cloud infrastructure (10 per cent),” the study said.

“Almost everything in the cloud is one excess privilege or misconfiguration away from exposure,” Kartik Shahani, Country Manager at Tenable India, said.

The intricate cloud landscape prompts organisations to resort to various tools and point solutions to counteract these threats. 

“Unfortunately, this approach drains resources, leading to substantial costs as they grapple with configuring and implementing disparate products. Effectively securing the cloud requires more than just technical proficiency. It demands a nuanced understanding of assets, vulnerabilities, and their alignment with overarching business objectives,” he said.

As many as 825 IT and cybersecurity professionals at large enterprises in countries like the U.S., the U.K., India, Germany, France, Japan and Australia took part in the online study conducted by Forrester Consulting. The study, which was fielded in March 2023, was commissioned by Tenable. The report outlines the challenges and risks associated with cloud infrastructure. 

“Respondents are particularly worried about the complexity introduced when trying to correlate user and system identities, access, and entitlement data,” it said.

These findings are part of the Indian edition of “Old Habits Die Hard: How People, Process and Technology Challenges Are Hurting Cybersecurity Teams in India.”

The Tenable study points out that 57 per cent of respondents in India felt that a lack of data hygiene in user data and vulnerability management systems prevents employees from making prioritisation decisions.

“Moreover, 56 per cent of organisations spend 11 hours or more per month creating security reports for business leaders and 46 per cent of them use multi-tabbed spreadsheets to analyse data from different solutions,” the report said.

The study also showed that 78 per cent of respondents allocate 25 or more employees to tasks related to deploying, supporting, maintaining, and managing vendor relationships for cybersecurity tools.

“This underscores the substantial human resources required for effective cybersecurity measures,” he said.

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