Cloud
The cloud threat for SMBs
James Hastings, senior cloud product manager, eSentire, looks at the specific issues smaller firms face.
S
mall and mid-size businesses represent a huge slice of the economy - Analysys Mason points to the 150 million SMBs
worldwide with an estimated spend of $1.45trillion on technology and IT. McKinsey suggests that SMB companies will make up half of the total $370billion spent on technology in the US, as well as 44 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. In Europe, around 42.5 percent of SMBs use
cloud computing, while the UK has more than 58 percent of SMBs using the cloud for their technology needs. To support those business operations, companies need to secure their processes and their data against attack. But with so many priorities to focus on, where should SMB IT leaders focus their time around the cloud and keeping things secure? And how can channel organisations help them get there?
Look for the big gaps When you work with SMBs, it is important to focus on where you can drive the most value to start with. For example, the
34 | March/April 2024
top issues we see our customers face in their cloud environments are security holes, driven by misconfiguration of cloud services, and over-permissive assignment of roles and permissions. Tese two avenues are responsible for the majority of cloud compromises and lost data. Ultimately, the SMB space shares the same cloud risks as other segments, but these companies oſten find themselves lacking the internal talent or tooling to implement security holistically. Even with adequate resources, it can be challenging to retain that in-house expertise needed to effectively implement, monitor and respond to potential issues in a timely manner. Alongside this, it can be difficult for small businesses to get effective visibility into their
cloud environments so they can secure and monitor their operations in the cloud over time. Although this isn’t new, it continues to resurface as more new cloud services and technologies emerge. Te likes of AWS, Microsoſt Azure and Google Cloud Platform have dozens if not hundreds of cloud service offerings, each of which may have its own approach to sharing data on its operations and
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