Most Companies Not Doing Enough to Address Cloud Security, Study Says

Three quarters of Canadian organizations feel they are not doing enough to address cloud security on both the IT and business sides.

According to a study released today by Scalar Decisions, cloud-based delivery is becoming mainstream as approximately 60 per cent of Canadian organizations have adopted cloud as an IT delivery model—yet almost half (48%) have no formal cloud security policy in place.

“The high adoption of cloud-based delivery tells us that security is not a barrier to cloud, but is still something that needs to be addressed in a vast number of businesses,” said Neil Bunn, Chief Technology Officer, Scalar Decisions.

The study, conducted with senior-level IT practitioners from across Canada, found a shortfall in the implementation of several key security items that underpin cloud security: responding organizations identified that they have yet to implement security items such as data classification and accountability (54%), client and end-point protection (57%), identity and access management (48%) or application-level controls (59%).

“Utilization and understanding of the cloud is low,” Bunn noted.

Across all levels of expertise – from experienced cloud users understanding the complexities of cloud transformation, to novice users – security was cited by 75 per cent of respondents as the number one ongoing post-adoption issue to be addressed.

“Security remains the number one expressed concern across all levels of cloud experience, yet there is an evident disconnect between organizations’ worries regarding cloud security and the actions being taken to mitigate the existing risks,” said Bunn.

The research, commissioned by Scalar and independently conducted by IDC Canada, found Canadian organizations anticipate that over the next 12 to 36 months the percentage of workloads hosted in the public cloud will increase significantly: respondents expect their cloud-based workloads to increase from 31% to 35% in 12 months, and to 41% in 36 months.

Similarly, surveyed IT decision makers anticipate significant increases in the percentage of their IT budgets allocated to the public cloud. On average, respondents estimate their IT budget to increase from 20% to 25% in 12 months, and to 29% in 36 months.

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