IBM poll finds enterprises increasing focus on cloud protection

TechRepublic reports that multi-cloud appears to have emerged as the dominant IT architecture among enterprises, which served to strengthen their focus on security, interoperability and compliance in this environment, based on a global study on cloud transformation by IBM. The study found that only 2% of companies use single or private cloud in 2021, compared with 29% in 2019. Meanwhile, more than a third of respondents said their largest investments were related to mitigating vulnerabilities and increasing cybersecurity, and 80% regarded data security being embedded across a cloud architecture as important or extremely important to achieving digital success. Respondents also claimed network complexity is becoming a new opening that threat actors can exploit. Almost 70% of respondents working in the government and financial services industries said their cloud performance was being hampered by sector-related regulatory compliance, with 85% of government-based respondents and 80% from the financial sector said the success of their digital initiatives hinged on the ability to run governance and compliance tools across multiple clouds.