What Does it Take to Manage Cloud Risk?

Flexibility has always been key to the cloud value proposition: the promise of freedom for enterprises to scale IT resources on demand and distribute software to anyone who needs it, anywhere, anytime.

Today that flexibility extends even to the ways organizations pick and choose cloud services and platforms. Hybrid and multi-cloud environments are the norm, mixed and matched to best fit the needs of the business.

But cloud diversity and multiplicity often come at a price, namely more headaches for cybersecurity teams. Our Trend Micro Defenders Survey Report 2025 looks at some of the challenges they face and what they’re doing to meet them, based on responses from more than 3,000 security professionals worldwide. In this blog, we review a few highlights of what we found.

Cloud risk is a strategic concern

A decisive majority of survey respondents (70%) rely on cloud to meet their IT needs. That includes 12% who say they’ve gone fully public cloud and 60% whose corporate cloud strategies are hybrid-focused. Another 13% say they plan to start shifting on-premises infrastructure to the cloud in the near future.

The heavy reliance on hybrid cloud is likely to grow in the coming years, driven by AI. More than 40% of respondents say hybrid cloud plays a critical role in their AI adoption and implementation—meaning they depend on a mix of cloud deployment options for specific use cases and data needs. Sixteen percent (16%) said their AI implementations are public cloud-first unless requirements dictate otherwise.

Obviously, the more central cloud is to an organization’s IT operations—including AI—the more they need to be mindful of and address cloud risk.

How do you contain a cloud?

The more cloud services organizations use, especially when they mix those services with on-premises IT assets, the more security teams have to manage and protect. Visibility across the entire cloud environment is often limited, and monitoring for threats typically requires multiple tools.

Because of this, it’s not surprising this year’s survey respondents say cloud environments are the hardest part of the attack surface to keep up to date in terms of maintaining accurate inventories of assets. And both cloud and AI are implicated in another key area of concern for survey respondents: data loss.

Taking on cloud risk

Security teams are using a range of technologies to protect their data, including in the cloud. Data loss prevention tools are by far most common at 24%, though emerging solutions such as data detection and response (DDR, 15%), secure service edge (SSE, 13%), data security posture management (DSPM, 12%), and cloud security access brokers (10%) are also gaining uptake.

This recurring theme of diversity—diverse cloud environments, diverse security tools to protect enterprise assets and data—points to a conclusion not explicitly probed in this year’s Trend Micro Defenders Survey Report: that the best way for cybersecurity teams to meet the full range of enterprise needs is to take a platform approach.

With a cybersecurity platform, the full set of capabilities can be integrated to defend cloud resources and AI applications, user identities and endpoints. Teams have fewer tools to manage and more visibility across the attack surface, including hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Toward more comprehensive cyber risk management

Cloud risk is of course just one component of the overall set of cyber risks organizations face today. Our last few blogs on the findings of the Trend Micro Defenders Survey Report 2025 have highlighted aspects of that bigger cyber risk picture, including the persisting need to close skills gaps and some of the emerging concerns about—and opportunities related to—AI.

In our next blog, the last in this series, we’ll pull all the pieces together and share what respondents told us they need to further develop and strengthen their approach to cyber risk management as a strategic, whole-of-business consideration. Don’t miss it. And download the full Trend Micro Defenders Survey Report 2025 today for all the details.

Next steps

Learn more about ways to manage cloud risk from these additional resources:

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