Cloud services are all the rage, and the race is on to adopt this new technology, but what if we just sit back and gaze? What is the hard data telling us? Skyhigh Networks recently released its latest quarterly Cloud Adoption & Risk Report, which offers the following insight based on enterprise customer usage data:

• For the first time, the average number of cloud services used in each enterprise decreased (although only slightly) relative to the prior quarter. Skyhigh explains that this flattening of services is likely because of companies’ efforts to consolidate and avoid high-risk cloud services.

• There were several notable cloud service security breaches during the quarter. Even if a service is exclusively used for personal reasons, other cloud services could be compromised because passwords are often reused. With this interconnection, motivated hackers could turn the cloud into a tornado for an unsuspecting business.

• Relative to other industries, high-tech companies took substantially more risks in the cloud.

• The majority of malware incidents occurred during nonworking hours, so security teams should monitor behavior continuously.

• The majority of data uploaded to high-risk cloud services went to services that were miscategorized by URL-categorization services. When services are miscategorized in this manner, existing firewalls and proxies are often ineffective, which can result in losses of an enterprise’s data and intellectual property and violations of internal security policies and external regulations.

The cloud is starting to take shape, and the data is revealing.