INFORMATIONWEEK REPORTS
Strategy: Cloud Questions
Cloud Security : When Perception Becomes Reality
Is the cloud insecure? Maybe, maybe not. But either way, that's not the first question IT should ask when deciding whether to host customer-or partner-facing systems on an IaaS or PaaS provider's network.
Just the perception of insecurity, whether grounded in fact or not, can have a significant effect on a company’s decision whether to do business with a firm whose application or service runs on the public cloud infrastructure. The fact is, security tops the list of cloud worries, according to every InformationWeek Analytics cloud survey we’ve deployed. In our 2010 Cloud GRC Survey of 518 business technology professionals, for example, respondents who use or plan to use these services are more worried about the cloud leaking their information than they are about performance, maturity, vendor lock-in, provider viability or any other concern. Fears of losing their own or customer proprietary data also the top the list of reasons cited by the 208 respondents who say they are not using these services. (S1490710)
