Netwrix Survey Shows Persistent IT Concerns About Cloud Security

Netwrix’s 2016 Cloud Security Survey found that despite advances in infrastructure and security, IT professionals still have reservations about cloud computing.

The cloud is becoming increasingly popular in the enterprise, with 68 percent of IT professionals saying they’re using at least one cloud-based service in the office. In 2015, just 43 percent of IT professionals said their companies were using a cloud service.

When it comes time to adopt a cloud service, a whopping 73 percent of IT respondents said their companies chose a software-as-a-service application (SaaS). Another 50 percent plan to use SaaS tools. Infrastructure as a service is in use in 34 percent of cases and 41 percent of respondents said they’ll use IaaS at some point in the future.

When companies go to the cloud, they’re not going all in on the public cloud. Rather, 40 percent of IT respondents said they’re employing a hybrid cloud model, compared to 21 percent for public cloud. In addition, 55 percent of companies said they will be adopting a hybrid cloud model in the future, topping the public cloud at 9 percent.

Although cloud adoption is on the rise, it’s having trouble attracting some customers, the Netwrix data shows. In 56 percent of cases, IT professionals ditched a cloud adoption idea due to security concerns. High costs were the reason 54 percent of companies didn’t adopt a cloud service.

When evaluating a cloud solution, data privacy and security is the top concern. In fact, 70 percent of organizations worldwide surveyed said they consider data security to be their main focus when choosing a cloud service.

Even after companies have adopted a cloud platform, IT professionals still have very real concerns about security. Nearly 70 percent of IT professionals said their top security concern is whether an unauthorized user has accessed their data. Thirty-seven percent of IT professionals are worried about malware and the cloud and just over a third said distributed denial-of-service attacks keep them worried.

Given those security concerns, companies are seeking some security guarantees from cloud providers. The most important guarantee—and something that 95 percent of organizations are seeking—is that service providers have a way to monitor user activities on their platforms. Not offering it could be a deal-breaker for many organizations.

Despite security concerns, 44 percent of IT professionals said cloud services don’t deliver “adequate security controls.” Cloud providers that offer the kinds of security controls companies want, then, have an advantage.

Although the cloud presents security challenges, 41 percent of IT professionals said moving to the cloud allowed them to improve the security of their corporate infrastructure. It also improved the security of their data.

There are many other benefits to moving to the cloud, IT professionals told Netwrix. For instance, 68 percent of IT professionals said cloud services afforded them more flexibility in resource utilization. Six in 10 IT professionals also said the cloud offers more scalability. However, just 8 percent of respondents said they’ll expand their cloud adoption in the next year.