Businesses in EMEA are increasing their investment in public cloud, despite ongoing security concerns and a perceived lack of understanding about who is responsible for keeping their data safe.
According to a study of IT decision makers by Barracuda Networks, 20% of IT budgets are being spent on public cloud deployments, with organizations expecting half of their infrastructure to be in the public cloud within two years. Nearly 35% of their infrastructure is currently in the cloud; the UK has the lowest proportion of public cloud in their infrastructure (29%), trailing behind Belgium/Netherlands (41%), France (38%), Austria (35%) and Germany (35%).
EMEA businesses are using public cloud for a range of purposes, most popular being data storage (77%) and data recovery (56%), followed by web and app hosting (54%), data analytics (51%), and CRM systems (46%).
However, less than half (45%) of respondents believe that their public cloud IaaS provider successfully offers strong protection when it comes to accessing cloud applications, with a similar proportion reporting the same for having strong protection of applications in the cloud (43%) or strong protection of data in the cloud (41%). That has led to 57% of respondents claiming they’ve invested in additional security products to protect access to the public cloud, while a further third (37%) said they plan to in the future.
“Despite the increasing adoption of public cloud across EMEA it’s telling that security concerns continue to loom large,” said Kristof Vanderstraeten, EMEA director of public cloud business development at Barracuda. “With 77% of respondents claiming to use public cloud to store data such as employee information, business IP and customer bank details, the upcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in May 2018 brings into focus ever more clearly the need to ensure cloud data is properly protected.”
Also, the survey found that contrary to the obligations set out in the Shared Responsibility Model, 64% of respondents believe it is the cloud provider’s responsibility to secure data in the cloud, while 61% said the same about applications and 60% about operating systems. There are geographical differences; this figure rises to 69% in Germany and drops to 51% in Belgium/Netherlands.
“It’s clear from this research that the public cloud remains a hugely attractive prospect, yet migrating sensitive business applications can be a complicated process which creates new security requirements,” said Vanderstraeten. “Against the backdrop of ever more prevalent and damaging online threats facing organizations, it’s natural to see security remain a challenge.”