Governments are behind on data encryption in the public cloud

A HyTrust survey of 59 government and military organizations found that nearly 20 percent of those respondents do not implement data security or encryption solutions in the public cloud.

Government agencies today are facing budget constraints and increasingly strict regulations. The latest cloud first policy now requires these organizations to consider cloud-based technology options, which has been a major driver in governments exploring cloud options, but according to the results, respondents still prioritize security as the top concern, followed by cost.

Key findings include:

• Nearly 20 percent of agencies using the public cloud are not encrypting their data
• Of the agencies using public cloud, 41 percent are using third-party encryption instead of cloud provider solutions
• Nearly 29 percent of agencies are still not using the public cloud.

“We see major potential for government agencies adopting cloud technology and some agencies are already seeing the benefits,” said Bill Aubin, Vice President of Federal at HyTrust. “By carefully assessing the technology, policy and security requirements, agencies will be well on their way to a seamless and safe transition.”

“We continue to see governments looking to deploy solutions that enable them to scale their workloads securely with no downtime,” said Ted Hengst, of the HyTrust Federal Advisory Board. “Now there are highly-secure solutions that provide governments with peace of mind so they can benefit from hybrid or multi-cloud deployments.”

The results also highlight government and military preferences for public cloud providers with VMware’s vCloud Air and Amazon Web Services (AWS) topping the list.