As public cloud is set to grow at three times the rate of the overall IT services market, security issues seem to be holding it back. A study for Barracuda released this week points to “security roadblocks” in public cloud infrastructure. But this is not a recent development. The same number of respondents (70%) in 2017 and 2020 claimed they are heavily or partly restricting public cloud adoption due to security concerns.
The average percentage of IT infrastructure running in the cloud stands at 45% today, it says, rising to an estimated 76% in five years and even higher (84%) in the US. EMEA is further behind at just 36% today, but will reach around the same percentage as APAC in five years (72%).
Security is on users’ minds - three-quarters of global respondents said their organization has been hit by an attack at least once, up from 56% in 2017. But the report fails to discover how many users actually moved to cloud and managed security as an answer to the issue.
While security in the form of issues around Security of public cloud infrastructure (42%), Impact of cyber-attacks (36%), and Security of applications deployed in cloud (33%) came out as the top concerns over public cloud infrastructure, close behind these came Difficulty integrating with legacy technology, Keeping up with regulations, and the Cost to maintain the use of public cloud.
Yet over a third (35%) of global IT leaders admit that their web applications are not fully protected, rising to 42% in EMEA. Why aren’t they doing more, asks the report? Perhaps they haven’t been able to find the right security partners, especially if they’re looking to public cloud platforms to offer protection.
There is good news for partners, however - 95% of global respondents said they are looking to third-party providers to help them overcome adoption barriers. However, a sizeable minority (42%) will only do so if these providers offer full integration, highlighting the need for security providers to ensure their products fit seamlessly into the major cloud platforms.
Chris Hill, Regional VP for Public Cloud, Barracuda Networks, commented: “Considering the abundance of sophisticated cyber attacks that face organisations every day, it is no surprise to see that such a large percentage of business decision makers are still cautious when committing to public cloud IT infrastructure. However, organisations can and should take comfort in knowing that if their data and applications are properly protected using proven firewall defence services, and users are gaining access with the assistance of SD-WAN technology, there is no reason that public cloud should be deemed any less secure than traditional data storage or software infrastructure.”
