New survey reveals CIO concerns on cloud security management

Nearly 20 percent of organisations have already suffered a security breach or malware exploit thanks to insecurity at their cloud provider.

That’s according to a survey from the Ponemon Institute which looked at the challenges organisations face when managing access and securing firewalls and ports in cloud environments. The survey revealed that 19 percent of respondents had already been hit by security exploits, while more than half said they were likely, or very likely, to be hit in the future.

The survey revealed some worrying concerns:  fewer than 30 percent of companies thought that their cloud security management was good, with nearly 50 percent either offering no comment or claiming it was poor.

Larry Ponemon, founder and chairman of the Ponemon Institute said the survey threw some light on cloud security issues, explaing why some users were particularly concered about cloud security. "For example, more than half of the respondents said it is very likely or likely that administrative cloud server ports left open for access expose the organisation to increased hacker attacks and security exploits," he said.

The survey, of nearly 700 US CIOs was sponsored by cloud security management company Dome9 and showed some serious concerns about cloud deployment. According to the research, 42 percent of CIOs said they would not know if their organisations' data had been compromised by a security exploit or data breach involving an open port on a cloud server.

For Dave Meizlik, Dome9 VP of marketing and business development, the survey has revealed some truths about the way that cloud is managed. He said that the high degree of automation within cloud deployments was throwing up its own problems. “If cloud infrastructure is automated then its security must be too,” he said.

Meizlik said that the survey showed that there needed to be a holistic approach to managing cloud deployment with some better security features. For example, according to the survey, 78 percent of respondents say the most important feature to cloud server security is the ability to close ports automatically, so they don't have to manually reconfigure their firewall.

He added that there just needed to be a change of mindset. “the cloud is not insecure, it’s how people are using the cloud,” he said.