For hackers, cloud is the new playground

Global spending on cloud security seen rising from $185m in 2017 to $305m this year

Hackers are now targeting business data as companies migrate to cloud storage, industry experts have warned.

Research firm Gartner said global spending on cloud security is expected to increase to $305 million (Dh1.12 billion) this year, up from $185 million in 2017, before surging to $459 million in 2019.

Nidal Taha, president of Z Services, a UAE-based cloud-based cybersecurity solutions provider, said cloud security has been one of the fastest growing areas of information security investments over the past five years as it is a “nationwide issue.”

Z Services offers its services through telecom operators. In the UAE it has a tie-up with etisalat.

“The hardware and software used to — [in] the traditional way — protect the ecosystem but now cybersecurity is becoming a subscriptionbased model [based on] payper-use,” Taha said.

“Security as a service is gaining traction globally and is on [track] to surpass onpremise deployments soon,” he said.

However, Nigel Hawthorn, director of cloud security for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at cybersecurity firm McAfee, said that the amount of cloud services used by an individual or company is increasing.

“Ninety-seven per cent of organisations use some sort of cloud services, whether the company has sanctioned it or not. At the same time, there is also a rise of unmanaged devices to the cloud. Eightyseven per cent of companies rely on their employees using personal devices to access business applications,” Hawthorn said.