News Feature | January 22, 2016

Survey Finds Shift In Trust Toward Cloud Adoption And Security

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Survey Finds Shift In Trust Toward Cloud Adoption And Security

Confidence in the cloud is rising, according to the report The Cloud Balancing Act for IT: Between Promise and Peril, from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and Skyhigh Networks. Their research revealed almost two-thirds (64.9 percent) of IT leaders think cloud is as secure, or more secure, than on-premises solutions.

Sharing this perception can help reassure your clients who are increasingly moving to the cloud, seeking benefits including lower cost, faster implementation, enhanced user experience, and competitive advantage, that the security measures you put in place are effective.

In the report announcement, Jim Reavis, CEO of the CSA says, “This survey provides excellent insight into what security professionals are doing to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of transforming their businesses into cloud-first organizations.”

The survey found the top barrier to cloud adoption is the inability to enforce company security policies (67.8 percent of respondents). Other barriers are regulatory compliance requirements (61.2 percent) and no budget to replace the legacy system (31.6 percent).

While fear that the cloud is not secure no longer makes that list, security challenges still remain. The top security challenge among survey respondents is lack of skilled security professionals to help the company leverage new technologies. Other challenges are a lack of an internal strategy for operationalizing threat intelligence data, lack of budget for technology that can detect cloud data breaches, and lack of actionable analytics around threat intelligence data.

The report found that companies with a chief information security officer (CISO) are more confident in their internal strategies, probably because they are more likely to have an incident response plan. Companies with a CISO also are more likely to have less of a concern about security.

Rajiv Gupta, CEO of Skyhigh Networks, points out the disruption caused by the move to the cloud will change the roles of IT and security professionals. “The opportunities are endless when these smart individuals can focus on becoming enablers to their business and partners with lines of business to make IT a truly innovative force,” he says.