There May Be a Shark Circling Your Data

By Jacob Serpa, Product Marketing Manager, Bitglass

In today's business environment, cybersecurity remains a topic of great importance. As more companies migrate to the cloud, security concerns continue to evolve. While BYOD (bring your own device) affords employees more flexibility as they work from a multitude of devices, it also exposes data to nefarious parties in new ways. In the face of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks, companies must learn and adapt or suffer the consequences.

In its latest cybersecurity report, “Threats Below the Surface,” Bitglass discusses the results of its survey of over 3,000 IT professionals. With the help of the CyberEdge Group and the Information Security Community, Bitglass was able to uncover the threats, priorities, and capabilities seen as most relevant by these professionals. The fact that the last year has seen 87% of organizations become victims of cyber attacks (and that a third of those organizations were hacked over five times) lends credence to cybersecurity concerns.

Despite the importance of maintaining visibility into data usage, relatively few firms are doing it well. While over 60% of companies monitor their desktops, laptops, and networks for security threats, the percentage drops to 36% for mobile devices and 24% for SaaS and IaaS applications. As organizations (inevitably) adopt BYOD and public cloud apps for increased productivity, they should proactively monitor for the corresponding security risks. However, when the survey respondents were asked about their firms’ current security postures, they indicated that they were primarily concerned about vulnerability with respect to mobile devices. Other prominent concerns included malware, privacy, and data leakage.

While most companies plan to increase their security budgets for next year, they should already be taking steps to ensure cybersecurity systems that consider contemporary tools like the cloud and BYOD. In particular, firms should be utilizing end-to-end solutions that secure data on devices, in transit, and at-rest in the cloud, while addressing concerns about topics like privacy.

More and more, conscientious companies are turning to CASBs (Cloud Access Security Brokers) and UEBA (user and entity behavior analytics) for modern-day cybersecurity. CASBs allow for discovering shadow IT apps, ensuring regulatory compliance in the cloud, preventing unwanted data disclosures, and more. With UEBA, a core component of CASBs, enterprises can detect account hijacking, data exfiltration, and other threats. CASBs and UEBA give companies a great deal of visibility and control over their data – a huge help in keeping an eye on the threats below the surface.