The adoption of cloud computing services is likely to follow the same path as virtualization and to mirror the same security concerns.
According to an ongoing survey of IT security professionals, right now most of them are very concerned about the security risks of using cloud services. The survey is being done by The Info Pro, which interviews the same group of 250 professionals twice a year to measure their opinions.
With 150 of them responding, two-thirds fall into the category of very concerned when considering both private and public clouds, the survey says. Early adopters of cloud services say they believe their major concerns can be addressed by hardening the applications hosted in the cloud.
The level of concern is about as high as it was when the sample group was first polled about virtualization, according to The Info Pro’s director of networking and information security research Bill Trussell. Over time users did risk assessments on virtualization and decided the benefits outweighed the downsides, he says. Now a quarter of IT security professionals say they are very concerned about virtualization.
The ongoing survey is the first time respondents are being asked about their concerns about cloud security, so it is difficult to say which way the level of concern will shift and how fast, he says. But he expects the concern to drop because he also expects cloud providers to address the specific areas of concern that are voiced.
Network and server specialists within IT also weigh in on decisions businesses make about using cloud services, Trussell says. More about their input next time.
