Survey shows: About half of companies use cloud services for sensitive data

The survey, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, is called "Encryption in the cloud," they surveyed more than 4,000 IT professionals in seven countries, including the United States, and about 38% per cent said their companies typically relied on data encryption for the Internet and cloud computing services when transferring data. Another 35% of respondents said their businesses were encrypted before they transferred data to a cloud service provider, so this could still be considered encrypted data in the cloud. 27% per cent of respondents replied that their companies were performing encryption in the cloud environment. 16% per cent of respondents indicated selective encryption at the application level. 11% said they chose to allow cloud computing service providers to encrypt stored data as a service.

The survey, sponsored by thalese-http://www.aliyun.com/zixun/aggregation/16952.html ">security," includes the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Australia, Japan and Brazil.

When sensitive or confidential data is transferred to the cloud to manage encryption keys, 36% per cent of respondents said their enterprise was responsible for managing encryption keys. 22% said that cloud computing service providers are best suited for managing encryption keys. Another 22% said that independent third-party service providers were the most critical responsibility management role.

"Even in the case of encryption outside the cloud, more than half of the respondents surrendered the encryption key," he added. The survey report said.

According to the survey, the trend of companies to move sensitive or confidential data to the cloud appears to be growing, and another one-third said they would also be likely to move sensitive or confidential data into the cloud over the next two years.

The survey also found a surprising contrast between the notion that cloud computing services and security are generally accepted. "Companies with a strong overall security posture seem more inclined to move sensitive or confidential information into the cloud than those with weaker overall security conditions." In other words, companies that are more aware of the security situation are more willing and able to take advantage of the cloud. The findings seem to have overturned the general idea that more security-conscious businesses are more skeptical of cloud security, and that only those with a lack of security awareness are more willing to ignore security. ”

The author Ellen Mesmer is a senior editor of the Network World, IDG Publications and Web site, whose columns cover news about the technology development trend of information security.

(Responsible editor: Duqing first)