Companies More Confident in Cloud Security, Study Shows

Posted by skyhighnetworks on June 24th, 2014

A recent survey of IT managers shows increasing confidence about cloud security, which according to industry analysts is responsible for driving increased investment in SaaS application by corporate IT department replacing legacy applications. “Fifty three percent of companies currently store sensitive or confidential information in the cloud and another 36 percent say that their organizations are likely to do so in the next two years,” says analyst Jean-Pierre Fillon.  

The Ponemon Institute study “Trends in Cloud Encryption” surveyed over 4,200 enterprise and information technology managers in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia, in order “to examine how organizations go about protecting a plethora of information assets entrusted to cloud providers.” Their findings suggest that “the percentage of organizations transferring sensitive or confidential to the cloud had increased by 4% in 2 years, from 49% (2011) to 53% (2013).” In addition, the percentage of survey respondents informed regarding the cloud security procedures of providers had improved from 29% to 35% in the past 3 years.

Furthermore, the Ponemon Institute found that survey respondents were less likely to believe that cloud services decreased their organization’s security posture, from 39% (2011) to 34% (2013).

Moreover, it was discovered that encryption adoption for data at rest in the cloud appeared to surge upwards by 7%. “For software as a service (SaaS), we see an increase in 32% in 2011 to 39% in 2013, it said. Similarly for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), we see an increase from 17% in 2011 to 26% in 2013. The Ponemon Institute also found that the majority of respondents worldwide were actually involved in a transfer of highly sensitive or confidential information to the cloud. “Only 11% of respondents say their organizations aren’t transferring sensitive or confidential information, or have no plan to use any cloud service,” the study stated. 

The Ponemon Institute also discovered responsibility for cloud security services for protecting sensitive data to be highly dependent on the specific type of service that’s being utilized. “In a SaaS environment, more than half the cloud provider as being primarily responsible for security and less than a quarter view cloud consumers as being primarily responsible. Only 19% see this as a shared responsibility,” it said. “In contrast, nearly half the users of IaaS/PaaS environments for sensitive data view security as a shared responsibility between the user and provider of cloud services. Only 22 percent see this as the sole responsibility of the cloud provider."
The use of cloud services by healthcare organizations is becoming commonplace and further growth is expected, according to a HIMSS report.

Moreover, the adoption of cloud security services by healthcare organizations is skyrocketing, and increased growth is expected. “The future of cloud services is positive, especially among those healthcare organizations that already use cloud services,” state the authors of the report. “Nearly all of the healthcare organizations presently using cloud services reported plans to expand use of cloud services in the future.”

Author :
Skyhigh Networks, the Cloud Security Services company, enables companies to embrace Cloud Security Services with appropriate levels of security, compliance, and governance while lowering overall risk and cost. With customers in financial services, healthcare, high technology, media, manufacturing, and legal verticals, the company was a finalist for the RSA Conference 2013 Most Innovative Company award and was recently named a "Cool Vendor" by Gartner, Inc. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Skyhigh Networks is led by an experienced team and is venture-backed by Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. For more information, visit us at http://www.skyhighnetworks.com or follow us on Twitter@skyhighnetworks.