71% expect transformational benefits from automating data security

Cyera, the data security company, introduced new research based on a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting that reveals security leaders’ current concerns and how they are prioritizing their data security investment decisions. Among the most pressing issues for the majority (70%) of security leaders is how to enable their business to use data securely to unleash significant organizational growth opportunities while improving their zero trust security posture, a top priority for 85% of those surveyed.

Among the 253 respondents who are director-level and above, 71% said their legacy technology and manual data security processes inhibit their business success. These respondents (71%) expect transformational benefits from automating data security. Among the reasons for investing in automation were: improving their zero trust maturity, avoiding regulatory fines, improving operational efficiency, increasing their resilience to ransomware threats and maintaining customer trust.

The volume and business value of data continue to increase, as does the use of cloud services to manage it. In an effort to become more data-driven, organizations expect to increase their use of Platforms as a Service (PaaS) by 1.5 times and their use of Databases as a Service (DBaaS) by 1.6 times over the next two years. Survey results revealed that the majority (79%) of businesses are investing to improve their data security posture across their cloud environments, automating the creation of data inventories and improving classification accuracy to assure compliance as the use of data grows.

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“The cloud has enabled businesses to accelerate value creation by capitalizing on insights from their crown jewels – their data,” said Yotam Segev, co-founder and CEO, Cyera. “The insights from this survey underscore for us the criticality of modernizing data security with cloud-native, automated technology that delivers holistic visibility, accurate classification and rapid time to value.”

Adopting modern data security technology promises to deliver the most significant benefits. The study found that 71% of security leaders expect automating data risk assessments to deliver a significant or transformational benefit, and 66% expect similar benefits from automating data discovery and classification. The top investment areas security leaders are investing in include data security posture management (DSPM) and real-time data detection and response (DDR) to data security exposures and data activity monitoring to implement dynamic data security controls.

Additional key findings:

• For 78% of respondents, the most critical purchasing considerations are improving the ease of implementation and time to value for data security technologies
• 82% aim to improve the accuracy of their data risk assessments
• 66% struggle to identify security exposures for sensitive data
• 61% struggle to identify compliance violations
• More than half of respondents listed cyber insurance repercussions, including increased premiums and reduced coverage, as the top concern if their business suffers a breach

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