BigID, a data intelligence platform, has released the Cloud Data Security Research Report 2022, in partnership with Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) - with results from over 1,500 IT & Security professionals.

According to the survey, organizations consider cloud data security a top 3 priority when protecting data - and cloud data security posture management (DSPM) is critical to addressing gaps.

Key findings include:

- Organizations are struggling with securing and tracking sensitive data in the cloud: Only 4% believe all of their cloud data is sufficiently secured: over a quarter of organizations aren't tracking regulated data, nearly a third aren't tracking confidential or internal data, and 45% aren't tracking unclassified data.

- 82% of organizations consider capturing dark data a moderate to high priority this year. Additionally, 79% of organizations reported to have moderate to high levels of concern around the proliferation of dark data in their organization but are unsure about how to approach the challenge.

- SaaS Data needs to become a priority: 76% of organizations rate tracking data across SaaS platforms as moderately to highly difficult.

- Organizations are utilizing multiple cloud platforms: 86% of organizations utilize multiple cloud platforms to store their data- across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS

- 62% of organizations report that they are likely to experience a cloud data breach in the next year.

"Cloud data security is top of mind for organizations of all sizes, showing that many organizations are unprepared to deal with the unique challenges of securing data in the cloud. With the rapid growth of cloud, it is essential that organizations take steps to improve their cloud data security posture," said Dimitri Sirota, CEO and co-founder at BigID. "This research underscores the value of solutions like BigID to accelerate cloud data security with a risk-based, data-first approach that can scale as data continues to expand across the multi-cloud."