GEC NEWS WIREBeyondTrust revealed the results of the 2018 Implications of Using Privileged Access Management to Enable Next-Generation Technology Survey. The survey shows that 90 percent of enterprises are engaged with at least one next-generation technology (NGT), such as cloud, IoT, or AI. Yet, while enterprises are optimistic about the business benefits these technologies can bring, they also have concerns about the risks, with 78 percent citing the security risks of NGTs as somewhat to extremely large. One in five respondents experienced five or more breaches related to NGTs. Excessive user privileges were implicated in 52 percent of breaches.
“It is encouraging to see that organizations understand the benefits that Privileged Access Management can deliver in protecting next-generation technologies, but there are more best practices to employ,” said Morey Haber, Chief Technology Officer at BeyondTrust. “The survey affirms that security should be at the forefront of new technology initiatives, otherwise, organizations can experience serious financial, compliance, and technological ramifications later on.”
The survey found broad interest in NGTs, with the most common being Digital Transformation (DX), DevOps and IoT. IT reports these NGTs are important for organizations, with 63 percent saying Digital Transformation (DX) will have a somewhat to extremely large impact on their organization, followed by DevOps (50 percent), AI (42 percent), and IoT (40 percent).
The survey also found that cloud transformation is accelerating. Respondents indicate that, 62 percent of workloads are on-premises, with 15 percent in a public cloud, 11 percent in private clouds, and 8 percent in SaaS applications. Over the next three years, that is projected to dramatically change—on-premises drops to 44 percent, public cloud jumps to 26 percent, private cloud increases to 15 percent, and SaaS increases to 12 percent.
Security issues, as a result of NGTs, happen at an alarming rate. Eighteen percent of respondents indicated they had a breach related to NGTs in the last 24 months that resulted in data loss, 20 percent experienced a breach that resulted in an outage, and 25 percent saw breaches over that time period that triggered a compliance event. One in five survey respondents experienced 5 or more breaches.
