Survey finds 50 percent of organisations use cloud for sensitive data
About half of the information technology and security professionals asked whether they use external cloud-based services for sensitive or confidential data said they did -- but their approaches to encrypting data in the cloud vary widely, according to the findings of the survey published today.
The "Encryption in the Cloud" survey done by Ponemon Institute sought the opinions of more than 4,000 IT professionals in seven countries, including the US. About 38 percent of the respondents said their organisations rely on encryption of data as it's transferred, typically over the Internet, to the cloud. Another 35 percent said their organisations encrypt data before it's transmitted to the cloud provider so that it remains encrypted within the cloud. 27 percent answered their organisations perform encryption within the cloud environment, with 16 percent of those selectively encrypting at the application layer, and 11 percent letting the cloud provider encrypt stored data as a service.
The survey, sponsored by Thales e-Security, included the UK, US, Germany, France, Australia, Japan and Brazil.