Business use of cloud services for handling sensitive infomation is skyrocketing, and a new study finds that corporate anxiety about the security of that information is rising right along with it.
In the survey conducted by the Poneman Institute for the encryption key management company Thales e-Security, more than half (53 percent) of the 4,205 business and IT managers surveyed said they were already sending sensitive data to the cloud. Another 31 percent of the respondents, from seven countries?the United States, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom?said they expected to do so within the next two years. But what's even more interesting is that 35 percent of the companies surveyed said their firm?s security exposure was worse as a result.
Richard Moulds, vice president in charge of strategy for Thales e-Security, said businesses should be concerned about the security of sensitive data in the cloud, even though most services promise to encrypt it. Once data leaves the premises, he said, businesses have little way of knowing how the encryption is managed. Small businesses in particular face increased security risks because their data is often kept on servers that host multiple customers.
Moulds likened most cloud encryption guarantees to providing a door lock without safeguarding the key. ?It isn?t about how well your door lock works. If you?ve got your key under a flowerpot on the front doorstep, there?s not much point.?
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