Fears of targeted cyber threats hinder cloud adoption

While businesses see cloud adoption as inevitable, security threats are the most significant cause for concern.


The upward trend of cloud adoption is unlikely to change as 97% of IT professionals in the US confirmed their cloud strategy includes the expansion of cloud deployments.

A recent survey of 200 US-based IT professionals by Confluera shows cloud deployments are expanding not only in scale but in width too, as more businesses adopt cross-platform solutions.

However, according to the survey’s results, the vast majority of insiders see cybersecurity as the main challenge for general and multi-cloud adoption.

Close to 63% of respondents said cyber threats specifically targeting cloud services were the main obstacle to cloud adoption.

Unsurprisingly, 60% said that the lack of security solutions protecting cross-platform environments was the key hindrance for smoother general cloud adoption.

When asked what’s holding them from adopting a multi-cloud approach, 69% also pointed to the lack of multi-cloud security coverage.

Notification fever

Researchers indicate that alert fatigue continues to be a pervasive problem in the industry. Respondents claim they spend as much as 54% of their time investigating security alerts.

The majority (63%) say the best way to optimize their time would be a cybersecurity solution that filters and notifies about alerts requiring further investigation.

Additionally, 57% of American IT professionals say that solution that highlights threat progression versus individual alerts would be best to save time spent on investigations.

Increased workload

According to the survey, rapid cloud adoption spurred by remote working added increased pressure to IT teams in the US.

85% of survey participants said that a changing work model caused an increase in daily workload last year. Longer hours, in turn, had IT professionals doing more with less as 69% said they find it difficult to keep valuable resources secure due to novel challenges.

Close to 66% said cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) was the biggest contributor to increased IT security workload.

Secure remote access to resources was a close second, with almost 64% naming this a key driver for longer work hours. Over half of the respondents said new cyberthreats added to increased workload.