The cybersecurity skills gap caused 40% of IT pros to stall their cloud migrations>
Tech Republic – Alison DeNisco Rayome
Though virtually all organizations are moving some assets to the cloud, a lack of cybersecurity talent is slowing migration for 40% of IT professionals, according to a Monday report from McAfee. Of the 1,400 IT professionals surveyed worldwide, 97% said their organization is using some type of cloud serviceâup from 93% last year. However, those with a cloud-first strategy dropped from 82% in 2017 to 65% in 2018, the report found.

The cybersecurity skills shortage has actually improved over last year, when 49% of IT leaders said that they were slowing cloud migrations, the report found. It takes an average of six to nine months to fill a cybersecurity position, according to Barika Pace, a research director at Gartner, which means that cloud security efforts may be placed on hold for many companies, unless they turn to outside consultants or third-party security platforms. While 83% of IT professionals said they store sensitive data in the public cloud, only 69% said they trust the public cloud to keep their data secure. One in four organizations that use Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Software as a Service (SaaS) have had their data stolen, according to the report. Meanwhile, one in five said they have experienced an advanced attack against their public cloud infrastructure. On average, 27% of IT security budgets are allocated to cloud security, the report found. This number is estimated to reach 37% by next year. And fewer than 10% of organizations on average anticipate decreasing their cloud investments as a result of the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcement in the EU. The report recommends the following three best practices for organization to keep their cloud data safe:

1) Adopt DevSecOps processes 2) Deploy automation and management tools 3) Develop unified security, with centralized management across all cloud services and providers
Link: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/the-cybersecurity-skills-gap-caused-40-of-it-pros-to-stall-their-cloud-migrations/