Many who use the cloud for work, don’t trust it for personal data

A survey by Lieberman Software revealed that half (51%) of IT experts whose job roles focus on the cloud don’t trust the cloud for any of their personal data such as contact lists, music, photos, or Webmail.

In addition, 86% of IT experts polled don’t trust the cloud for their organization’s more sensitive data – preferring to keep it on their own network, while 88% said that they believe that there is a chance that the data their organization keeps in the cloud could be lost, corrupted or accessed by unauthorized individuals – probably explaining why they won’t use it for their company’s most sensitive data. However, 46% of survey respondents still believe that their move to the cloud has increased their organization’s IT security.

The vast majority of respondents (91%) said they believed the move to cloud services has been more convenient for their organization’s in-house IT team, and 56% think it has saved the company money. Nearly nine in ten (86%) believe their organization’s cloud deployment has been successful.

Commenting on this research Philip Lieberman, President and CEO of Lieberman Software, said “These results highlight the challenge that companies face. We can see that cloud deployments have delivered significant benefits for many organizations, but there are still some very real security concerns. The fact that so many of the people we spoke with don’t trust any of their personal data to the cloud, shows just how deep rooted these concerns are.”

He continued, “Cloud service providers need to demonstrate how seriously they take security and the lengths they are going to in order to safeguard sensitive data from access by unauthorized individuals. Customers should be asking their cloud providers to prove the security controls they have in place, and how they guarantee compliance with the same standards – FISMA, PCI-DSS, SOX and other mandates – that are enforced in the customers’ own datacenters.”

The survey was conducted at the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Congress in November 2012. 70% of survey participants were from companies with more than 1,000 employees, and 50% had more than 5,000 employees.