Thoughts on Cloud Security Shifting into Reverse?
Posted by Jim Flack on September 26, 2011
We are still looking for participants in our 5-minute cloud security survey, so if you and your company are using cloud-based solutions or thinking about moving applications or processes to the cloud, please take our survey.
Meanwhile, we just couldn’t resist taking a sneak peek at some of the early results. We won’t spill all the beans, but some thoughts about cloud security appear to be taking a 180-degree turn from a year ago.
According to many surveys and thought leaders in 2010, companies were coming to terms with security and data protection in the cloud. In fact, in our survey last year, the majority of respondents believed even sensitive data could be secured in the cloud. Also, nearly half stated that the cloud was secure enough to replace on-premise solutions. We read and heard that folks thought it was perfectly safe to put nearly any kind of data in the cloud - Financial statements, medical records, invoices, personal photos, entire music collections, last will and testament, you name it. It’s not surprising that sales of cloud applications grew exponentially in early 2011.
Then came the security breaks and outages, which occurred at Amazon, Sony PlayNation and DropBox, among others. And the hacker group “Anonymous” dumped more fuel on the fire. Add to that the rapid-fire blogosphere and social media, and everyone seems to be questioning cloud security.
Personally, I think it’s overblown, and when we step back and evaluate this relative to overall network security and the total cloud market, most experts agree that the cloud is as secure if not more than most on-premise infrastructure. But the noise does seem to be making companies pause and take a closer look at security. Our early results show a much higher percentage of respondents today are questioning what kind of data they would put in the cloud and a much smaller percentage believe the cloud is as secure as on-premise solutions.
But this is only one of the intriguing trends in our new survey–and we would like to hear from you, too! It only takes a few minutes, and all participants receive a free copy of the final research once we’ve compiled the results – and you have a chance to win a $150 gift card to Thinkgeek.com.
Tags: Cloud Computing, Cloud Security, Network Security, SaaS
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