Research commissioned by Veritas Technologies has revealed that the vast majority of enterprises are failing to stay within their cloud budgets. In fact, 94% of respondents reported that their organization has incurred higher costs than originally anticipated when using a public cloud service provider (CSP), and are overspending by an average of 43%.

The Securing Your Enterprise in a Multi-Cloud Environment Report, which surveyed 1,500 technology and IT decision-makers across 12 countries, showed that enterprises clearly see value in the public cloud, as 100% of respondents agreed that using CSPs and their tools provided benefits to the organization, such as flexibility, scalability and mobility.

However, many organizations are planning their cloud budgets without fully understanding what they are ultimately going to need to pay for. For example, nearly all (99%) respondents believed that the CSP would be responsible for protecting some of their assets in the cloud. This is rarely the case as most CSPs make it very clear that, while they are on the line to ensure the resiliency *of* the cloud, their customers shoulder the responsibility for the data and applications *in* the cloud.

This is an important distinction since the research highlighted that data in the cloud is a highly attractive target for cybercriminals. 89% of respondents told Veritas that their organizations had experienced a ransomware attack on their cloud environments.

The misunderstanding around the cloud responsibility model means that many companies have not factored in the requirement for third-party data protection and are leaving their critical data vulnerable to these ransomware attacks - and other data-loss incidents. More than half (53%) of organizations, the research shows, have lost data as a result of relying solely on the backup tools built into solutions by their CSPs. And, 76% of respondents agreed that current offerings from CSPs fall short of their organization's security needs.

As a result, it is, perhaps, unsurprising that the research showed that unforeseen data protection needs were the most common source of unexpected cloud costs, with 40% citing backup and recovery as the leading area of overspend.

Sonya Duffin, Data Control Evangelist at Veritas said: "Our research highlights some of the huge benefits that organizations are getting from the cloud - but it also shines a light on the need for a better understanding of what purchasers are actually buying from their CSPs. No one is going to budget for something that they think they're getting for free. But, by the time that IT leaders realize that there's something that they've overlooked, it's common that they've already lost data. Therefore, if they want to avoid asking for additional budget to cover a project overspend, it's critical to factor in data protection and take back control, right from the start."