Survey: Half of IT pros believe cloud risks outweigh benefits

By Lisa Banks | Jul 13, 2010

A new survey has revealed 50 per cent of IT professionals in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ) believe risks around cloud computing outweigh the benefits.

 

The news comes despite analyst firm IDC predicting cloud services will represent as much as $51 billion in IT spending in the region by 2013.

 

The survey was completed by 218 IT professionals based in the ANZ region by Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA); an organisation with 86,000 members.

 

International vice president of ISACA, Ria Lucas, said CIOs are moving to the cloud in greater numbers.

 

"Moving to cloud computing represents a significant shift in how companies utilize resources, so it is not surprising IT and business professionals feel there could be a number of potential risks in entrusting information to the cloud."

 

"However, the advantages of speed, cost, flexibility and access to high value services will drive the business demand for cloud services as the rewards have the potential to outweigh the risk," Lucas said.

 

ISACA also looked at what IT professionals saw as the top risks their employees could make online and 56 per cent rated staff not fully understanding IT policies, 52 per cent said checking personal emails or visiting social networking sites at work and 42 per cent said using unapproved software during work hours.

 

The president for organisation for privacy professionals iappANZ, Kevin Shaw, recently spoke to CIO about the need for security and privacy issues around cloud computing to be addressed by CIOs.

 

CIO Australia