European businesses and critical infrastructures are far too dependent on cloud services and that’s not a very good thing, according to the European Union’s top cyber security body.
The cloud is a major security concern given the pervasiveness of its use in handling data in critical sectors such as energy, health, finance, transportation and commerce, according to a report released on Thursday by the European Network and Information Security Agency (ENISA).
“In a few years, a large majority of organizations will be dependent on cloud computing,” the report said. “Large cloud services will have tens of millions of end-users. What happens if one of these cloud services fails or gets hacked?”
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The report was released a week after the European Commission released a proposed Network and Information Security Directive, which among other things called for mandatory breach reporting especially for cloud services. No less than 40,000 organizations are expected to be impacted by the proposed rules.
The ENISA report said better transparency regarding cloud dependencies on critical operators and services is critical and recommended that governments should include large cloud services in national risk assessments and tracking of cloud dependencies.
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