Deloitte says Security an area of concern in cloud computing

June 28, 2010

Deloitte says Security an area of concern in cloud computing

Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic.

Even as an increasing number of Indian firms look at embracing cloud computing, data security continues to remain a primary concern for them, said research firm Deloitte.

Cloud computing allows companies to use services, softwares and applications on a pay-per-use model without actually owning any hardware infrastructure or licence. This helps companies save on setting up IT infrastructure or purchasing licences.

“A lot of chief information officers (CIOs) express concern over data security in a non-cloud environment. This concern is only heightened when their data is hosted on a server elsewhere,” Deloitte senior director Sundeep Nehra said.

However, he declined to comment on the investments being made for cloud computing, or the potential opportunities for security solution providers in this regard. Citing an example, he said that in a 500-bed hospital, hundreds of medical images and medical records may be stored. Any data loss could hamper the diagnosis of patients.

The situation gets complicated in the case of banking and financial services, where data on millions of transactions has to be stored everyday. “Information is critical, and, as companies would invest in securing data on their own premises, they also need to ensure that their data on the cloud is secure,” he said.

Companies like Amazon.com, Microsoft and Google offer cloud computing services globally. Analysts peg the Indian cloud computing market to be worth more than $200 million. While small and medium-sized enterprises seem to be adopting cloud-computing faster, large companies are also keen on moving in that direction for optimising costs.
These companies have the option of moving to either a private cloud or a public cloud (where solutions and data of more than one company are stored).