Companies are afraid of the cloud

Although using cloud solutions can boost company efficiency, not every business has made the jump to cloud services. In a recent F-Secure survey of companies with up to 500 employees, concern about data security emerged as a key reason why.

45% of companies who don’t use a cloud solution cite lack of control and security issues as the main reason for not being interested in cloud-based services. Among the bigger companies surveyed, that number is higher: 67% for companies with 50 to 249 employees, and 70% for companies with 250-500.

Other business reasons for lack of interest in cloud-based services: 21% of companies cited costs, 13% performance issues and 12% legal liabilities.

“Companies who are afraid of the cloud for security reasons should be aware that a properly designed and managed business cloud service is an extremely secure choice,” says Timo Laaksonen, Vice President of Content Cloud at F-Secure. “Furthermore, a practical example: Say an employee needs to access information on their mobile device to share with a customer. If you don’t provide an easy-to-use, always available online service to do this, they will simply use their personal cloud account or download the information directly to their device. And that is a security risk.”

Of companies that use or are open to using cloud-based solutions, data security is also seen as the most important consideration in choosing a cloud collaboration service. 84% say data security is extremely important, followed by ease of use, and accessibility from anywhere.

52% said location of servers is extremely important, and 43% cited the origin country of the service provider. 27% of companies using cloud say it was the employees, rather than the company itself, who first began using a cloud-based solution for business purposes.