IT professionals' confusion over the definition of cloud computing could be hampering enterprise adoption, research has claimed.

Email security vendor Proofpoint quizzed 200 IT bods, nearly two-fifths of whom admitted to being "generally confused" by the term cloud computing. A third of respondents claimed the technology is more hype than substance. Less than a quarter of IT staff believe their firm's chief executive could define cloud computing.

Half of respondents felt that moving sensitive data into the cloud could contravene government data protection statutes or increase the risk of the data being compromised. Managing data in-house is considered the safer option by 43 per cent of IT pros, the survey claims.

Almost half of those quizzed claimed deploying cloud services would engender staff perceptions that their employer was planning to reduce headcount.

Proofpoint's chief executive Gary Steele said: "Any great paradigm shift – cloud computing included – will always be accompanied by hype and a fair amount of confusion. So we are not surprised to see these percentages, even among the power users – IT professionals. There is still a significant amount of fear, uncertainty and doubt surrounding data security and financial payback issues.

“The takeaway is that clearly all clouds are not created equal. Given the increasing number of software-as-a-service email security and compliance solutions available, and differences in data security, service level agreements, effectiveness and ease of use, enterprises must conduct their due diligence when moving these types of functions to the cloud."