Dive Brief:

• The majority of enterprises have not, or do not know, if they inspect their cloud services for malware, according to a new report conducted by Netskope in partnership with the Ponemon Institute.
• Lack of visibility in the cloud can result in more damaging or costly data breaches, the survey of 643 IT and IT security specialists found. 
• Nearly a quarter of respondents could not determine if they were breached, and nearly a third couldn’t determine what types of data were lost in a breach. 

Dive Insight:

Part of the problem is so-called shadow IT, because CIOs can’t protect what they don’t know about. The study found that while 49% of business applications are now stored in the cloud, less than half of them are known or approved by the IT department.

But even when cloud applications are known, companies fail to inspect them, despite the huge rise in malware. The study found almost half of organizations do not inspect the cloud for malware, and 12% were unsure if they do.

"With the rise of cloud threats like accidental data exposure, malware and ransomware aimed at exfiltrating data and extracting financial gain from sensitive data, IT teams need more robust intelligence, protection, and remediation to protect their data from breach or loss," said Sanjay Beri, Netskope founder and CEO, according to the announcement. 

For companies that did experience a data breach in the last year (31%), a quarter of them didn’t have any idea how the breach occurred, and 30% could not determine what data were lost or stolen. Of those organizations that do inspect the cloud for malware, almost 60% of respondents said they did indeed find malware.