As new technologies like the cloud, IoT, Big Data and more emerge, organizations are playing catch up to upskill their employees to handle challenges that come with them.

According to ESG’s 2018 annual global survey of the state of IT, more than half (51 percent) of respondents said their organization had a problematic shortage of cybersecurity skills. The need for these professionals is expected to increase, widening the shortage. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment for information security analysts to increase by 28 percent between 2016-2026, much faster than the national average.

As the volume of data that organizations collect and store continues to increase and, in tandem, the skills gap widens, many are transitioning their data storage from on-premise data centers to cloud-based service providers. With this transition to and trust in the cloud comes a need for developing focused policies and plans to protect data assets.

According to McAfee’s 2017 report, Building Trust in a Cloudy Sky: The State of Cloud Adoption and Security, 93 percent of organizations reported using cloud services, and more than half (57 percent) had moved from physical servers to hybrid cloud (both physical and virtual), up 38 percent from the previous year.

The shift to the cloud is a necessary and valuable step forward to the future of data storage, but questions and concerns remain around the security of the data, especially if employees do not possess the necessary skills to protect these systems and, in turn, security is reliant on third-party venders. The same McAfee study found that four in 10 public cloud services are procured outside of IT, and companies report only 47 percent visibility into their cloud services. This “shadow IT” has caused 65 percent of IT professionals to believe this way (Read more...)