Cloud security study reveals: over 50% of system failures are caused by human error and mismanagement

The past few years have witnessed a rapid surge in the use of SaaS applications across various industries. But with this growth comes a significant challenge: managing security and assessing risk in application connectivity.

In this blog, I’ll explore the fascinating insights from a recent study conducted by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). The study delves into the complexities of managing security and assessing the risk of application connectivity in the rapidly growing world of SaaS applications and cloud environments. With responses from 1,551 IT and security professionals from organizations of all sizes and from all corners of the globe, this study provides valuable insights into the challenges of application security in cloud environments and how to best manage them.

Insight # 1 – Human error is the leading cause of application outages

With more than half of these outages linked to manual processes and the increasing complexity of the systems themselves, businesses are losing productivity, revenue, and even reputation due to downtime.

In many cases, the root cause of these outages is traced back to configuration errors, software bugs, or human mistakes during deployments or maintenance activities.

To combat these issues, investment in automation and machine learning technologies can mitigate the risk of human error and ensure the reliability and stability of their applications.

Insight # 2 – 75% of organizations experienced application outages lasting an hour or more.

The financial impact of outages has been significant, with an estimated cost of $300,000 or more per instance. These costs include lost productivity, revenue, and potential customer churn.

While human error is the major contributor to downtime, outages are often caused by a combination of additional factors, including hardware or software failure and cyber-attacks.

Comprehensive disaster recovery plans, backup systems, and application performance monitoring tools are necessary to minimize outages and ensure business continuity.