IT security teams cautious over cloud

Thales survey highlights lingering concerns.

IT security teams still have serious reservations about moving to cloud-based infrastructures, according to a new survey from security and encryption firm Thales released today.

The news comes just days after consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers warned that companies are rushing into the cloud without paying adequate attention to the security concerns.

Thales' annual Encryption and Key Management Benchmark report interviewed nearly 700 IT professionals globally, and found that 47 percent would not move to the cloud unless data was encrypted, while 43 percent have no current plans to move to cloud computing.

Data security was the chief concern of most respondents, while 59 percent said that they would not allow encryption keys to be managed by a cloud service.

"This is painting a picture of a lot of scepticism relating to the cloud, much more than I imagined," said Kevin Bocek, director of product marketing at Thales. "There is an opportunity for the cloud service providers, though. I'm sure they will roll out additional security services to overcome these objections."

Bocek explained that cloud pioneer Amazon already offers encrypted storage, along with a virtual private network service for customers with stringent security requirements.

The Thales report also said that organisations are still slow to adopt tape and database encryption technologies, despite the obvious benefits in the case of the latter, because of concerns over the impact on performance.