The rate at which companies fall victim to data breaches is growing at an alarming pace, according to a new report published today.

The study, from Thales SA, is based on the results of an industry survey that the French defense and cybersecurity giant commissioned from 451 Research LLC. The analysis firm interviewed more than 1,200 senior technology executives at medium and large enterprises. The participants’ responses indicate a major uptick in hacker activity during 2017, much like another poll that was released by ThreatMetrix Inc. earlier this month.

According to Thales’ report, 36 percent of the respondents reported that their companies have fallen victim to a data breach in the past 12 months. This figure reached 46 percent among the survey participants who hailed from the U.S. For comparison, the 2017 edition of the report found that only 24 percent of American enterprises had been hacked during the preceding year.

The study links the increase in data breaches to the rising adoption of technologies with the potential to create new attack surfaces for hackers. For instance, Thales pointed out that 71 percent of enterprises are currently exploring initiatives related to the “internet of things,’ which suffers from widespread security issues. The past year saw the emergence of multiple botnets that exploited flaws in internet-connected hardware to carry out attacks.

Another trend that might help explain the report’s findings is the continued growth in cloud usage. The study found that 42 percent of enterprises employ more than 50 cloud applications, 53 percent use least three platform-as-a-service offerings and 57 percent rely on three or more infrastructure-as-a-service platforms.

Major cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services Inc. invest a great deal in ensuring that their platforms are secure. However, individual deployments are still potentially vulnerable since network protection policies have to be set by the customer. This proved to be a major challenge in 2017 after several companies, including a defense contractor, were found to be storing sensitive records on insecure AWS servers.

But there’s also a more positive side to the phenomenon. Thales’ study found that concerns about data stored in the cloud is driving companies to spend more on cybersecurity, with 39 percent of respondents having named the issue as a top motivator. Just as many pointed to “avoidance of financial penalties” as another major consideration.

Overall, Thales said, 78 percent of the polled organizations plan to increase cybersecurity spending in 2018, including nearly 86 percent of U.S.-based enterprises.

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