What Pros Think about Cloud Security

To say most organizations remain nervous about cloud computing is becoming a cliché. But it's so true.

See Also: Cybersecurity Awareness Engagement Toolkit: Elevate Your Security Culture

We're in the midst of conducting a global, multi-sector cloud computing security survey, and some striking results have surfaced even in the early stages of the polling of IT security practitioners. Of course, the final results could and in some instances will change, and I'm not going to provide specific figures. But certain trends are emerging:

• Data protection by far is the top reservation respondents have about cloud computing.
• Organizations rely on others - whether it's a company similar to theirs or a third party - to verify the security of a provider's cloud offering.
• Enterprises aren't in a big rush to put critical systems on the cloud.

Despite reservations, the preliminary results suggest that most organizations are involved in cloud computing to some extent. These respondents may show some jitters about the safety of the cloud, but they recognize that's where information technology is heading.

We want to know what you think, and we invite you to take the survey. Click here to participate.

And, if you're in San Francisco for RSA Conference 2012 on Feb. 29, join NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory Chief Technology Officer Tom Soderstrom and me for a session entitled How to Launch a Secure Cloud Initiative, where Tom will discuss JPL's successful efforts to prototype a variety of cloud services. I'll kick off the session with a brief overview of the preliminary results of our cloud computing survey.