The Report – entitled ‘Secure Your Data in the Cloud’ – aims to give those organisations with real concerns as they migrate from on-premise provisioning to Cloud based solutions, answers to a host of questions relating to the issue of security. It follows ‘Secure Your Data – Protect Your Business’, published last year, which contained best practice recommendations arising from interviews with a number of organisations on how they treat data.
Robert May the Managing Director of IT specialist ramsac, commented on the Report, “Whilst adopting Cloud Computing for business can offer many exciting advantages in regards to cost structure and availability of data, it also presents a new set of potential security risks. Our own experience with clients backs up the statistics that businesses are rightly concerned that a move to the Cloud shouldn’t mean having to make any compromises on data security and many of the same safeguards that apply to hosting your own IT network on-premises need to be applied if data is stored remotely. It’s important that organisations fully investigate their own specific security needs and potential problems and ensure that any data held in the Cloud passes the same vigorous checks as it would do if hosted anywhere else.”
According to recent research by the Cloud Industry Forum, data security is cited by 82 per cent of companies as a key concern for them as they take the decision to migrate to the Cloud. This was followed rapidly by data privacy at 69 per cent.
Frank Jennings, Head of Commercial, DMH Stallard LLP and author of the Report, stated: “Industry surveys consistently show that data security is the number one concern when it comes to Cloud adoption. The Report aims to answer key questions being asking about Cloud solutions and we have asked a host of industry experts for their views as well as our own. The answers themselves reveal that data is not inherently more insecure in the Cloud than on-premise. According to our experts it is all down to what safeguards there are and the responsibility for this resides with the data owner themselves.”