According to George Hulme story over on CSOonline.com a recent Forrester report said that 67% of large enterprises are using cloud based Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to support product applications. This is significant in that previous studies always seemed to indicate or at least measure that enterprises were doing testing and development on the cloud, but not actually deploying live product apps.
Based on this it would appear that whether security concerns are real or not organizations are forging ahead with their migration to the cloud. Now it could be that the benefits outweigh the risks or it could be that the risks themselves have been taken out of proportion to the reality of the situation.
As George points out in his article though, there have been recent surveys by the Ponemon Institute (that are sponsored and financed by security vendors with their own axe to grind) that show half of the respondents don’t think their organizations ability to secure the cloud is adequate.
While I am not saying the Ponemon Institute survey is wrong, it could certainly be biased. It could be that the majority of the respondents are security admins. Security admins are more likely to say that they are worried about security than IT folks in general and certainly more likely than non-IT types. Of course as is common in security, the numbers would seem to indicate that at the end of the day the security concerns are being brushed aside by the non-security types as they move to the cloud.
Another possible take is that cloud providers are doing a better job of showing how security is built into the cloud infrastructure today. While perhaps not satisfying the concerns of the security pros, it would seem to be enough to allay the fears of everyone else.
In any event it seems the march to the cloud continues to gain momentum, security be damned.
Related articles
- Are you ready for networking in the cloud? (infoworld.com)
- Terremark Cloud Services Pass DOD Security Test (informationweek.com)
- Clouds Vs. Outsourcing: The Next Battleground (informationweek.com)
- PwC Survey Says IaaS Will Count for a Third of IT Resources in 2014 (readwriteweb.com)
