Private and hybrid clouds quickly gaining ground

IEEE and the Cloud Security Alliance announced results of a survey of IT professionals that reveals overwhelming agreement on the importance and urgency of cloud computing security standards.

Among the survey’s findings:

• Ninety-three percent of respondents said the need for cloud computing security standards is important; 82 percent said the need is urgent
• Forty-four percent of respondents said they are already involved in development of cloud computing standards, and 81 percent said they are somewhat or very likely to participate in development of cloud security standards in the next 12 months
• Data privacy, security and encryption comprise the most urgent area of need for standards development
• The ISO 27001/27002 Information Security Management Standard is a key regulatory driver of standards compliance, as are Data Breach Notification, PCI/DSS (Payment Card Industry Standard), EU Data Privacy Legislation, SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)
• The use of public, private and hybrid clouds will rise over the next 12 months. The survey found that, while public clouds are most popular, private and hybrid implementations are quickly gaining in adoption
• The rate of using and providing software, platform and infrastructure as a service (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS) will increase consistently in the next 12 months. The survey showed that PaaS and IaaS are set for the sharpest growth.

“It’s clear from the survey’s findings that enterprises across sectors are eager to adopt cloud computing—but that security standards are needed both to accelerate cloud adoption on a wide scale and to respond to regulatory drivers,” said Jim Reavis, founder and executive director of the Cloud Security Alliance. “Cloud computing is shaping the future of IT, but, as this study shows in a variety of ways, the absence of a compliance environment is having dramatic impact on cloud computing’s growth.”