Last week, Gartner published their Top 10 cloud security predictions for 2016. They predict that "by 2020, one third of successful attacks experienced by enterprises will be on their shadow IT resources."

As Gartner rightly points out, the reality is your business is engaging with shadow IT resources and they shoot a big hole in your security strategy. Based on Cisco Cloud Consumption engagements, large enterprises on average use over 1,200 cloud services-over 98% of them are Shadow IT.

Gartner also highlights that, "by 2018, the need to prevent data breaches from public clouds will drive 20% of organizations to develop data security governance programs." They recommend that organizations "Develop an enterprise-wide data security governance program. Identify data security policy gaps, develop a roadmap to address the issues and seek cyberinsurance when appropriate."

You Can't Protect What You Can't See

With more data and business critical operations residing in the cloud, now is the time to identify what cloud services you are using and put in place a cloud governance program to help address risk. Cisco Cloud Consumption as a Service can help you with both.

Specifically, it can help you discover and put in place ongoing monitoring of your cloud use across SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. It also provides data security tools to identify risky cloud vendors (based on 150+ risk parameters), identify cloud anomalies, and trace cloud use to specific groups and individuals. These tools combined with creating a cloud governance office can help you reign in the risks of Shadow IT.

At Cisco Live Las Vegas, I will be hosting a session on "Managing Adoption & Business Risks of Cloud." During this session, I will share more about the explosion of cloud use and Shadow IT within organizations and how Cisco can help organizations manage cloud use and risk. We will also be sharing how you can leverage your existing Cisco Security investments and combine Cloud Consumption to extend powerful security features of Cisco Secure Web Gateways to protect cloud services.

Also, please stop by the CiscoLive World of Solutions and visit with us! The Cloud Consumption booth will be located in the Data Center & Cloud area, and our partner Presidio will be demonstrating Cloud Consumption as a Service in the Cisco Powered Booth area.

Not attending CiscoLive? We'd be happy to schedule a personal consultation or demo to speak with you about how you can reduce the risks of cloud use and Shadow IT.  Schedule a demo and personalized Cloud Shadow IT & Risk consultation today. 

What are your top cloud risk concerns? Let me know on Twitter @robertdimicco or Linkedin.