About 42 percent of IT decision-makers and security managers say they are running security applications in the cloud, according to a survey of about 300 IT security pros from Schneider Electric. Almost half of those surveyed said they are likely or extremely likely to move their security operations to the cloud in a few years.
In the survey, 57 percent of respondents believe the cloud is secure. The cloud has the most confidence in on-demand security, and that confidence is highest among IT professionals (78 percent). I’ve stated before that cloud security is better than on-premises security, but it’s nice to see external evidence backing that up.
The fact of the matter is that security is a complex and expensive set of technologies. Moreover, security is only as good as its ability to be proactive. Cloud-based security has been able to outperform traditional security approaches and technologies for a few key reasons:
- The ability to be more proactive: Cloud technology is on-demand, so it can combat emerging and changing threats with updates that occur automatically.
- The cost: Most on-demand security services charge by use, not for licenses. This means you pay for only what you work with.
- The ability to better integrate security and devops: Security and devops seem to mix best when security is part of a service accessed outside the development and deployment platforms. That external, service-oriented nature means security can easily be made part of most devops processes.
On the downside, Schneider’s survey suggests there are considerable barriers that still need to be overcome. For example, 54 percent indicated that their security systems aren’t able to adopt new systems and services.
Still, it’s clear that cloud-based security is not only an option, but the preferred approach.