Cloud users considering moving PII back on-premises

Nearly half of organisations that store customer personally identifiable information (PII) in the cloud are considering moving it back on-premises due to data security concerns, research from Netwrix indicates.

The data security and governance software company’s 2019 Cloud Data Security Report found that 46% of organisations that have moved personally identifiable customer information into public or private clouds have considered moving it back in-house.

Half of surveyed organisations reported storing PII customer data in the cloud, and of these, 39% reported having security incidents in the past year. More than half of those reporting security incidents could not identify who was at fault for a security breach.

Organisations that store sensitive customer data in the cloud but do not classify all their data were the most susceptible to security incidents, with 75% having reported experiencing one in the past year.

But only 33% of respondents that store all their sensitive data in the cloud had security incidents over the same time.

Netwrix CEO Steve Dickson said the findings indicate that organisations have the false belief that moving customer data back on-premises will ensure data security.

“In reality, without a data security program in place, these organisations are playing a simple ‘shell game’,” he said.

“Organisations need to inventory their data to ensure they know where all the customer data resides, migrate it to a secure location and implement an auditing solution to ensure only the right people have access to the right data.”