The cloud is still a virtual no man's land when it comes to the security of the information stored there.
That is the conclusion of Courion's first annual 2010 Access Assurance Survey, which found that one in seven companies admit they recognize there are potential access breaches in their cloud platforms, but they do not know how to locate them.
The survey also revealed that there is widespread confusion about who is in charge of securing information in the cloud, with nearly 80 percent of respondents unable to identify the chief entity responsible.
The worldwide survey of 384 business managers from large companies—86 percent of which had 1,000 or more employees—indicated that cloud security controls are not keeping up with the rapid pace of cloud adoption.
Furthermore, the dearth of knowledge about which platforms or applications workers may access is actually on the rise, up nearly 10 percent from 2009.
Close to half of the respondents said they believe a compliance audit of their cloud-based applications could reveal some unauthorized access by users.
An additional 15.7 percent confessed they are cognizant of the existence of potential access violations, but they do not know how to find them.
Although more than 65 percent said that the company from which the data originates, the application provider, and the cloud service provider are all accountable, an additional 13 percent expressed uncertainty.
Businesses are less confident this year than last year that they can deter fired employees from accessing one or more information technology systems.
"These results show that many organizations are not currently doing the proper due diligence to ensure that sensitive data is being accessed by the right employees on-premise, not to mention when data is housed by a third party provider," the report states.
"The responses indicate that the problem is getting worse, and is only being exacerbated by the increasing use of cloud-based applications, which creates more access violation risk."