Cloud Insecurities: 43% of Enterprises Surveyed Have had Security Issues With Their Cloud Service Providers

Most enterprises face apprehension over adopting cloud computing, and with good reason: Nearly half (43 percent) of enterprise IT decision makers reported a security lapse or issue with their cloud provider within the last 12 months, according to a recent global cloud security survey conducted by Trend Micro.

The global survey of 1200 U.S., UK, Germany, India, Canada and Japan IT decision makers uncovers the insecurities and concerns surrounding their journey to the cloud. It confirmed that, on the whole, enterprises are moving toward the cloud at a brisk pace and are initiating a giant multiplicative wave of new deployments. Although slightly over 10 percent of the respondents currently have cloud computing projects in production, close to half are either implementing or piloting new cloud applications.

Despite cloud computing's growing popularity in most countries, confusion is still at play among enterprises, some of whom don't recognize what cloud computing services are. When presented with a list of cloud computing services, 93 percent of the respondents said they are currently working with at least one of them. And yet, 7 percent of the same respondents said that their company has no plans to deploy any cloud computing service – a contradiction.

Performance and availability puts the focus on security

While security is still the major hindrance toward cloud adoption, more enterprises are now perceiving performance and availability of cloud services to be of near-equal consideration. According to the survey, the top barriers respondents see in adopting cloud computing services are: Concerns over security of data or cloud infrastructure (50 percent) and performance and availability of cloud service (48 percent).

Data in the cloud is vulnerable without encryption

When it comes to safeguarding sensitive data stored in the cloud, enterprises turn to encryption. 85 percent of respondents(2) said they encrypt data stored in the cloud. And before taking the plunge into cloud adoption, more than half of survey respondents said they would be more likely to consider a cloud provider if encrypted data storage were included in the offering. Nevertheless, most commonly used encryption key management techniques used in the cloud today are vulnerable.

More information on Cloud Computing can be found at www.CRMindustry.com.