Ninety-eight percent of UAE organizations are concerned about their current level of cloud security, according to a recently published report.

The survey by Sophos, titled “The State of Cloud Security 2020”, states that the top cloud security concerns for UAE respondents are identifying and responding to security incidents (46 percent), data leaks (46 percent), and managing access to cloud accounts (38 percent).

Sophos commissioned research firm Vanson Bourne to survey 3,521 IT managers who currently host data and workloads in the public cloud. The respondents, who included 65 from the UAE, were asked about their experiences with cloud security.

The survey was conducted during January and February 2020. IT managers participating in the survey were spread across 26 countries in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.

Seventy-five percent of organizations in the UAE experienced a public cloud security incident last year, the survey said.

These incidents included ransomware (28 percent), other malware (54 percent), exposed data (15 percent), compromised accounts (17 percent), and cryptojacking (17 percent).

“The most successful ransomware attacks include data in the public cloud, according to the State of Ransomware 2020 report, and attackers are shifting their methods to target cloud environments that cripple necessary infrastructure and increase the likelihood of payment,”  Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist at Sophos said.

Many employees around the world had to work from home during the COVID-19 outbreak.

“The recent increase in remote working provides extra motivation to disable cloud infrastructure that is being relied on more than ever, so it’s worrisome that many organizations still don’t understand their responsibility in securing cloud data and workloads,” Wisniewski said.

“Cloud security is a shared responsibility, and organizations need to carefully manage and monitor cloud environments in order to stay one step ahead of determined attackers,” Wisniewski added.

(Reporting by Gerard Aoun; editing by Seban Scaria)

(gerard.aoun@refinitiv.com)

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