Federal agency cloud adoption increases 400%

Tripwire announced the results of a survey on cloud security technology trends in the federal government. The survey evaluated the attitudes of more than 100 federal information technology professionals from military, intelligence and civilian agencies.

Despite the security concerns often cited as roadblocks to cloud adoption, survey results indicate that U.S. federal agencies are rapidly expanding their adoption of cloud infrastructure. In fact, according to a recent report from Deltek, the federal cloud computing market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 32 percent over the next three years.

Key 2013 findings include:

• 58 percent say federal initiatives designed to encourage cloud adoption have improved security.
• Four times more respondents say they are outsourcing at least one third of their IT infrastructure to cloud vendors than in 2012.
• 50 percent are moving moderate-impact data to the cloud, compared with just 31 percent in 2012.
• Only 28 percent say FedRAMP’s baseline security controls accelerated their agency’s migration to the cloud, compared with 11 percent in 2012.

“A few years ago, the federal government made bold claims with its “cloud first policy,'” said Dwayne Melancon, chief technology officer for Tripwire. “The data indicates that this move is working — not only do stakeholders perceive improved security from this initiative, they are showing confidence by moving more important data and workloads into the cloud.

“We’re also seeing a slow but steady increase in the adoption of baseline security controls. This is an area where effort should be applied to accelerate progress, otherwise we run the risk of cloud adoption being impacted by a major security event. Broader adoption of FedRAMP’s baseline security controls can help mitigate that risk.”

Tripwire’s federal survey was conducted by Dimensional Research from September 26 through October 4, 2013.