Ponemon Cloud Security Study – more data security in the cloud 

Leading IT experts recently found that not all cloud data is stored securely. The Ponemon Institute recently conducted a study to investigate data security in the cloud. 

65% of information security experts want to store their object data in the cloud. However, 47% of IT managers doubt that the data in the cloud is as secure as in their own corporate data center. The new study therefore examines the perception of data storage technologies that are based on on-premise or the cloud. To this end, 483 information technology experts with extensive knowledge of the individual object storage technologies were surveyed. 

Why do people like to store data in the cloud? 

The respondents stated that they use object storage in the cloud because storage costs would be significantly reduced. They also save on investments such as an expensive data center or disaster recovery. 12% of respondents stated that improving data security would be a key IT goal in the future.

How high is the real security risk? 

Jim Varner, CEO of SecurityFirst, commented: "There are quite significant security gaps. These are the reason for the delay in mass migration of data to the cloud." He sees a trend in companies to increasingly migrate to the cloud. In this way, costs are reduced and the benefits of object storage are fully exploited.

Varner also said that companies often neglect a unified and comprehensive approach. This should include the integration into the existing security structures and their constant control. Object data in the cloud should meet the same security and privacy requirements as any other corporate data. An approach that is structured and based on comprehensive control is the decisive step in the right direction.

What other important findings does the study contain? 

• Approximately 51 percent of respondents favor the distribution of data from the cloud to various services and suppliers. 
• For 54 percent, cost savings are the main reason for using the cloud. 
• A large number of users also store personal data in the cloud. 
• 79 percent currently do not use any object storage. Nevertheless, around 38% are currently testing the cloud to evaluate their own company. This suggests increasing data migration to the cloud.

In addition, the Ponemon Cloud Security Study dealt with cloud use in the financial services industry, which traditionally places high security demands. There, 55% use object storage and 35% the cloud. In other industries, the latter figure was slightly lower at 29%.

This development suggests that the financial sector will increasingly adopt new data storage technologies, especially object data storage in the cloud. Object data storage will establish itself in many industries because it can be used flexibly and cost-effectively.