New Barracuda Report Reveals Cloud Use Continuing to Grow, but Organizations are Still Unclear on Cloud Security Responsibility

CAMPBELL, Calif., June 22, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Highlights:

• Of respondents using the cloud today, 40 percent of their infrastructure is already in the public cloud, and they expect to increase this to almost 70 percent within five years.
• 99 percent said that their organizations have seen benefits as a result of moving to the public cloud.
• 91 percent reported they had concerns over their use of public cloud, with 54 percent stating that cyberattacks are their chief concern.
• 71 percent felt the cloud provider was responsible for customer data in the public cloud, and 66 percent felt the cloud provider was responsible for their applications in the public cloud.

Barracuda Networks, Inc. (NYSE: CUDA), a leading provider of cloud-enabled security and data protection solutions, today announced key findings from a new global research report, "Unlocking the Benefits of Public Cloud." Commissioned by Barracuda and conducted by Vanson Bourne, the research surveyed 1,300 IT decision makers from organizations using public cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) from the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), and from Asia Pacific (APAC). The report outlines the respondents' use of public cloud, benefits of public cloud, challenges with public cloud, and public cloud security.

"This report highlights the ongoing increase in public cloud use globally, with many organizations seeing substantial process and financial benefits. However, there are still a significant number of organizations that are not clear on the shared security model and the implication to their data and applications," said Senior Vice President and General Manager of Security at Barracuda, Hatem Naguib. The challenges in migrating legacy security appliances and architectures require having the right infrastructure for securing hybrid cloud solutions. Organizations need to select cloud ready security solutions that are designed for the new architectures and capabilities enabled by public and hybrid cloud adoption."    

Background Public Cloud Use
Respondents' use of public cloud is on the rise, as is their sophistication in working within the cloud. On average, organizations have nearly 40 percent of their infrastructure in the public cloud today, with the expectation to increase this to 70 percent over the next five years. Four in 10 reported that their organization relied on public cloud deployments to expand their services, often replicating those over multiple regions, while 30 percent said they only migrated selected services to the cloud and kept the balance on premises. Overall, the survey found that organizations are growing more comfortable with hybrid environments that deploy a range of public cloud services along with more traditional on-premises infrastructure.

Public Cloud Benefits
Nearly all the respondents (99 percent) said that their organization has seen benefits as a result of moving to the public cloud, including greater scalability and reduced IT expenditures. The survey found, on average, that organizations didn't use a single cloud provider for everything, and cited a number of reasons for this: Top of mind was that different providers had different strengths (63 percent), followed by the view that this increased security (51 percent) and helped keep costs down (42 percent).

Public Cloud Challenges
Security remains to be the biggest challenge when it comes to using the public cloud – 71 percent felt that security concerns restricted their ability to migrate workloads to the public cloud. Nine in 10 (91 percent) of organizations reported they worried about their use of public cloud, with cyberattacks being the chief concern at 54 percent.  Phishing (50 percent), DDoS (47 percent), APTs (45 percent), and ransomware (41 percent) were the main threats that most concerned them. Over half (56 percent) had experienced at least one cyberattack, and found that the average number of attacks an organization had seen were five. The challenge with security was further heightened with the information organizations are storing in public clouds: Over 50 percent of all organizations store some type of personal data (personnel records, medical records, etc.) in the public cloud, and nearly the same percent (55 percent) store customer order history.

Public Cloud Security
The Shared Responsibility Security Model – wherein cloud providers are responsible for the security of the cloud, while organizations using the cloud are responsible for the security of what they put in the cloud – is not new, and 72 percent felt they fully understood their cloud security responsibilities. This was in stark contrast to what organizations believed their cloud provider was responsible to provide for security – 71 percent felt the cloud provider was responsible for customer data in the public cloud, and 66 percent for applications in the public cloud. Additionally, 52 percent were confident that their move to the cloud was secure, with three in five – 62 percent – responding that they had included additional security solutions in their public cloud infrastructure.

Recommendations

• Organizations often end up with multiple cloud providers, as well as having an on-premises (legacy) infrastructure. This can have implications on complexity and overall costs; it's further compounded when third-party solutions such as security are added to the mix. Therefore, customers are advised to look for third parties who support a wide range of ecosystems with the same or similar solutions.
• As customers weigh licensing options – by usage, per hour, unlimited, etc. – we see customers beginning to understand how they can leverage different ones to gain greater cost controls. This becomes more important when third-party vendors are added to the mix. Customers value when third parties offer equivalent licensing options to how the customer is licensing their public cloud infrastructure.
• Companies deploying the most common security routine – routing branch locations' traffic through a central security solution – generally find these solutions lack scale and cost benefits as their cloud leverage increases. Companies that look at distributed security solutions, such as next-generation firewalls and web application firewalls, closer to the point of access reduce those issues, but find new ones in managing multiple devices. Therefore, look for vendors who can provide a common management scheme – either in their products or using public cloud security infrastructures – to simplify managing and monitoring ongoing security.

Barracuda solutions are cloud ready and designed for hybrid deployments. Barracuda on-premises and cloud solutions can work seamlessly together to protect customers' data and applications regardless of where they reside. For more information, please visit cuda.co/cloudready.

Resources
To view the full report, please visit: cuda.co/wpunlocking

Barracuda Blog – Barracuda Cloud Research Confirms Growing Usage and Remaining Security Concerns: cuda.co/19259

Infographic – Public Cloud Usage by the Numbers: cuda.co/19261

Solutions Brief – Public Clouds Go Mainstream: cuda.co/tvcloudms

About Barracuda Networks, Inc. (NYSE: CUDA)
Barracuda (NYSE: CUDA) simplifies IT with cloud-enabled solutions that empower customers to protect their networks, applications and data, regardless of where they reside. These powerful, easy-to-use and affordable solutions are trusted by more than 150,000 organizations worldwide and are delivered in appliance, virtual appliance, cloud and hybrid deployment configurations. Barracuda's customer-centric business model focuses on delivering high-value, subscription-based IT solutions that provide end-to-end network and data protection. For additional information, please visit barracuda.com.

Barracuda Networks, Barracuda, and the Barracuda Networks logo are registered trademarks of Barracuda Networks, Inc. in the US and other countries.   

Forward-Looking Statements 
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the potential benefits, performance, and functionality of Barracuda security products. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that are, in some cases, beyond the Company's control and that could cause the Company's results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that could materially affect the Company's business and financial results include, but are not limited to customer response to the Company's products, as well as those factors set forth in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company expressly disclaims any intent or obligation to update the forward-looking information to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date of this press release.

Contacts
Jonelle Elam                                                                
Barracuda Networks, Inc.                      
408-342-6415                                                    
[email protected]         

SOURCE Barracuda Networks, Inc.

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