Netskope Cloud Report: Web traffic has significantly shifted to cloud

We recently released the August 2019 edition of the Netskope Cloud Report. Beginning with this cloud report, we are offering an expanded view of enterprise internet traffic. This is the result of our introduction of Netskope for Web in early 2018. Netskope customers using Netskope for Web run all of their apps, cloud services, and web traffic through the global Netskope Platform, and this new dataset provides us with a unique view of the trends across both cloud and web.

While there are several interesting data points from this report, one eye-opening statistic is how much enterprise web traffic is used for apps and cloud services. Surprisingly, 85% of enterprise web traffic is being used for SaaS apps and cloud services, compared to only 15% for traditional web use. This is a significant change from a few years ago, where most of our traffic was focused on static or non-Saas websites. Although we have seen first hand the rapid growth of apps and cloud services over the past few years, this is the first time we’ve been able to compare it directly with traditional web use. This clearly demonstrates the large amount of data moving in and out of the cloud and underscores the need for organizations to reassess their security strategy and ensure that they have the right balance of controls across their cloud and web environments to protect their critical data and applications.

Other findings in the August 2019 cloud report include:

• The top policy violations differ for cloud and web traffic, with data loss prevention (DLP) policy violations topping the list for cloud services and acceptable use and malicious activity policy violations topping the list for traditional web traffic.
• For cloud services like Facebook and Gmail, the average enterprise is using approximately 100 distinct instances of each of these services.
• Enterprises have an average of 1,295 apps and cloud services in use, an increase from 1,246 in last cloud report where more than 95% are not managed or approved by IT.
• Organizations leading this shift include HR and Marketing departments, each using an average 100+ apps and cloud services.

The results clearly indicate we’re no longer in a web-based world but a cloud-first world. What’s needed to address this evolution, is not just a secure web gateway (SWG) solution or a unique cloud access security broker (CASB) solution, but a consolidation of these solutions – an app aware,  cloud-based secure web gateway for the next generation of cloud-first enterprises. This solution combines all of the inline and API-based functionality of these necessary technologies (e.g. SWG +CASB +DLP +SSL +API +ATP) to best address dynamic cloud activities and elusive threats as well as provides cloud performance and scale for an undisrupted user experience.

For more discussion of these findings and more, download a full copy of the August Cloud Report, here, and check out one of the solutions Netskope provides to help you in this cloud-first world.