Prioritizing security efforts is key to data security in the cloud

32% of healthcare organizations store a wide range of sensitive data in the cloud, including healthcare data and personally identifiable information (PII) of customers and employees, according to Netwrix.

In addition, the number of those who are ready to adopt cloud-first approach has increased by 31% since 2018, and the number considering becoming 100% cloud-based has grown by 12%.

Unfortunately, their IT teams might not have enough resources to properly protect this sensitive data in the cloud, as 85% of them did not see an increase in their cloud security budgets in 2019.

Other findings revealed by the research:

• 26% of healthcare organzations had at least one security incident in the cloud during the past 12 months. These organizations have two things in common: None of them classified all the data they stored in the cloud, and all of them store all their sensitive data in the cloud.
• The majority of IT teams at healthcare organizations plan to strengthen data security in the cloud by encrypting data (70%) and monitoring activities around data (50%). However, one third of them do not receive any financial support from their management, which makes it more difficult for them to improve security in the cloud.
• 18% of healthcare organizations would consider moving their data from the cloud back on premises. Their main reasons include security concerns (56%), reliability and performance issues (22%), and high costs (22%) for the cloud. If they decide to make this move, they will start by migrating healthcare data (33%), customer data (33%) and employee data (11%).

“Prioritizing security efforts is the key to ensuring data security in the cloud, especially if budgets are tight, as is common at healthcare organizations.

“When organizations know exactly what data they have in the cloud and have classified it according to its value and level of sensitivity, they are in a better position to choose appropriate controls within their budgetary constraints and protect sensitive data more effectively,” said Steve Dickson, CEO of Netwrix.

“By 2022, more than 30% of the hospital data centers will be based in the cloud. Healthcare systems have been skeptical about adoption of cloud, but cost pressures and the need to reduce capital expenditure have been changing that mindset.

“After enduring several high-profile breaches and realizing the maturity of various cloud providers (both in expertise and scalability), healthcare systems are finally less skeptical than they used to be about the cloud.” — Gartner, “Forecast Overview: Healthcare Provider Market, Worldwide, 2018,” by Anurag Gupta, July 13, 2018.