Security worries hindering UK cloud adoption

UK businesses more worried about data security, privacy and control than a year ago, survey finds

Rising levels of concern over security, privacy and lack of control are hampering cloud adoption in the UK, according to industry body the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).

Some 70 per cent of execs polled by CIF cited data security as among their biggest concerns during the decision-making process to move to cloud, up from 61 per cent last year.

The proportion of respondents who cited data privacy as one of their biggest concerns also rose from 54 to 61 per cent, while 40 per cent saw loss of control/manageability of their IT systems as a key hang-up, up from 24 per cent a year ago.

The research, conducted by Vanson Bourne on CIF's behalf, quizzed 250 senior IT and business decision makers at UK enterprises, SMBs and public sector organisations in February.

CIF chief executive Alex Hilton said: "As stated previously, hybrid will be the modus operandi for the majority of organisations for the foreseeable future, being either not yet ready to move everything to the cloud, or unwilling to.

"There are a number of contributing factors here: fear of losing control of IT systems, security and privacy concerns, and lack of budget currently stand in the way of greater adoption of cloud by businesses."

Richard Pharro, chief executive of APM group, an independent certification partner to CIF, believes cloud providers are too secretive.

"Unfortunately, some cloud providers are opaque in the way that they operate," he said.