Cloud services are steadily evolving to become more adaptable and secure with each passing day, but are we still wary of accepting the cloud in our daily lives? Intel Security had shouldered the task of studying and outlining opinion about the same through their second annual cloud security report called “Building Trust in a Cloudy Sky.”
After conducting a survey with well over 2,000 IT professionals, the said report outlines the current state of cloud services adoption in the IT industry, primary concerns with private as well as public cloud service, security implications and the evolving impact of Shadow IT services. And you’d not be too surprised to know, as this is the fact, that trust and perception of the populace towards cloud services is improving with each passing year.
The report adds that most organizations are of the opinion that public cloud services are as or more secure than private cloud servers, and helps them lower the cost of ownership and overall data visibility. And it might be the first time but people who trust public cloud now outnumbers those who distrust it by a ratio of 2-to-1. Now, more than 62 percent of surveyed IT professional store their personal data on the public cloud. And this acceptance has encouraged organizations to make the shift as well.
Talking about the acceptance of cloud services, Raj Samani, EMEA chief technology officer, Intel Security said,
The ‘Cloud First’ strategy is now well and truly ensconced into the architecture of many organizations across the world. The desire to move quickly toward cloud computing appears to be on the agenda for most organizations.
Further, the number of organizations using private cloud dropped from more than 50 percent (51%) down to 24 percent over the past year. And the use of hybrid cloud has since increased from a measly 19 percent to 57 percent. This means that organizations now need data centers to evolve rapidly to a highly virtualized, cloud-based infrastructure. And if changes are implemented immediately, then it can lead to increment in virtualized data center servers from the current 52 percent. Adding to the same, Samani says,
This year, the average time before respondents thought their IT budgets would be 80 percent cloud-based was 15 months, indicating that Cloud First for many companies is progressing and remains the objective.
While the global adoption of cloud services is moving on a growth trajectory but ongoing shortage of security skill continues to affect cloud deployment. Almost half of the organizations surveyed for this report lack the necessary cybersecurity skills, thus, contributing to the increase in Shadow IT activities. This means most of the organizations are still reluctant to use the in-house cloud data storage options.
On the other hand, 36 percent organizations surveyed are faced with a scarcity but are still continuing to use cloud services regardless. And the visibility of these Shadow IT services has dropped from about 50 percent last year to just under 47 percent this year. And this, the IT professionals thinks this phenomenon is hindering their ability to keep the cloud safe and secure.
