Security 'Now Key' In Cloud Take-Up

Security is now a key driving force for cloud adoption according to the latest survey by Rackspace, marking a significant turnaround for the technology.

The study, titled “The Anatomy of a Cloud Migration,” polled 500 IT and business decision makers in the UK who have either been through or are planning a cloud migration project and found that security was one of the top three motivations for moving to the cloud.

38 per cent of respondents cited security as a reason for migrating, beaten only by reducing IT costs (61 per cent) and disaster recovery capabilities (50 per cent). 58 per cent of organisations also said that they migrated business-critical data to the cloud first, indicating that cloud security fears are abating. Previously, the cloud has been viewed as a risky proposition when compared with on-premise solutions, due to the possibility of network infiltration and cyberattacks.

“Cloud has long been associated with a loss of control over information, but more and more businesses are now realising this is a misconception,” explained Brian Kelly, chief security officer at Rackspace. “Organisations are increasingly seeing the cloud as a means to keeping their systems and information safe and in the year ahead security will be an accelerator, not an inhibitor, of cloud adoption.”

However, reduced security fears should not be taken as evidence of business complacency. 48 per cent of respondents still cited security as a key concern surrounding cloud migration, beating loss of control and rising costs. However, only 20 per cent of businesses had actually faced challenges meeting security requirements as a result of cloud computing.

Part of the reason for the improvement to cloud computing’s reputation is that many third party vendors can actually deliver more robust security than in-house IT teams. Smaller businesses, in particular, often do not have the resources required to thwart the wide variety of existing cyberthreats and so receive better protection from a cloud supplier.

Image Credit: Maksim Kabakou/Shutterstock

Author: Barclay Ballard
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Published under license from ITProPortal.com