Bitglass report finds 66% of companies omit key security tool

Cloud access security broker (CASB) company Bitglass, has just released A for Adoption, its 2019 Cloud Adoption report.

The study examines the rate of cloud adoption in more than 138,000 companies worldwide.

Results indicate that although 86% of enterprises have deployed cloud-based tools, only 34% have implemented single sign-on (SSO), one of the most basic and critically important cloud security tools.

For the past five years, Bitglass has conducted research on the rate of enterprise cloud adoption in order to uncover deployment trends.

This year, the report found that the use of cloud applications has grown extensively over the past 12 months, with Salesforce and Slack increasing by 55% and 44%, respectively.

As more companies deploy cloud applications and modernise the way their employees perform their work, they must also implement effective security tools and strategies tailored to a cloud-first environment.

"Cloud adoption has grown at a staggering rate, allowing organisations to evolve and keep pace with the market's ever-growing productivity and flexibility demands," says Bitglass CMO Rich Campagna.

"The significant gap between the adoption of cloud-based tools and cloud security technologies indicates that most companies are at serious risk of suffering a data breach.

"Enterprises must understand that operating in the cloud is fundamentally different from the traditional way of conducting business, and that on-premises methods of protecting data are no longer sufficient," Campagna says.

In addition to tracking SSO usage, Bitglass uncovered adoption rates for a host of different cloud-based tools, including Microsoft Office 365, Google's G Suite, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Slack, Salesforce, Box, and ServiceNow.

Key findings:

• Despite an early lead in the cloud productivity market, the adoption of Google's G Suite has reached only 33%, up from 25% in 2018. Microsoft Office 365 still reigns as the cloud productivity suite of choice with a 79% adoption rate.
   
• Deployment of AWS has increased by 43% since 2018, reaching an average of 20% this year.
   
• At 82%, financial services organisations are the fourth largest adopters of Office 365. Additionally, their adoption of SSO grew nearly 41% since last year, indicating that the financial services sector is recognising the criticality of cloud security tools.
   
• While 79% of healthcare organisations have adopted Office 365, only 30% have adopted SSO. This disparity is particularly concerning in light of the vast amount of sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) that they collect and store.
   
• Technology remains the leading vertical in terms of AWS adoption (32%) and is the top user of Slack (79%). However, the industry lagged in SSO, reaching only 33% adoption.
   
• Education is a major user of cloud-based tools, adopting Salesforce (30%) and Okta (18%) more than any other industry.
   
• Larger organisations are the leading adopters of cloud applications and single sign-on. 64% of large firms utilise SSO, which is nearly 50% more than medium-sized companies, and more than twice that of small organisations.

Methodology

Using internally developed technologies, the Bitglass research team scanned the cloud to identify which cloud services were in use across a sample of more than 138,000 companies.

The analysis included productivity suites such as Office 365 and G Suite, messaging apps like Slack, file-sharing apps like Box, as well as single sign-on (SSO), a basic cloud security tool.