Epic ERP Managing Director, Stuart Scanlon

by AKANI CHAUKE
JOHANNESBURG – SOUTH African organisations must prioritise cloud security amid the spiralling cost of data breaches globally.

An industry executive has offered the advice as the cloud becomes an indispensable part of the standard operating procedure required for the digital landscape.

Stuart Scanlon, Managing Director of epic ERP, said thanks to the arrival of multinational data centres in the country, more decision-makers were experimenting with transitioning their solutions and data to this online environment.

“However, the fundamentals of cyber security should never fall by the wayside,” he said.

Scanlon said irrespective of geographic location and business focus, data is fundamental in the connected environment.

He said with companies increasingly reliant on data analytics to draw insights and customise offerings for customers, and end-users comfortable in sharing their share personal information to get a more tailored experience, safeguarding this asset must be a business priority.

“The unfortunate reality is that nobody is safe, and no organisation can afford to assume they will not be targeted.

According to the 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study, the average cost of a data breach globally is more than R56 million.

“Given the complex regulatory environment when it comes to data protection, businesses can ill afford to only pay lip service to security,” Scanlon said.

According to Gartner, the biggest problem is not in the security of the cloud but rather in the polices and technologies for security and control of the technology.

Scanlon said one of its most concerning statistics is that by 2022, expectations are that at least 95 percent of cloud security failures will be the fault of the organisation and not the service provider itself.

Epic ERP is a Southern African enterprise resource planning (ERP) firm.

– CAJ News