Advisory Services Article: Security is Still Your Responsibility in the Cloud

Over the next 14 months, 80 percent of IT budgets at organizations throughout the U.S. will go to cloud computing services, according to a new global study from Intel Security. As sensitive data is moved to the cloud, it is becoming more obvious that the cloud still has its risks. According to the study, only 13 percent of IT security professionals completely trust public cloud providers to secure sensitive data, and 66 percent of them believe senior management does not completely understand the risks of storing sensitive data in the cloud.

When assumptions are made about cloud security, some risks are overlooked. Organizations need to be aware that encryption and redundancy are not enabled by default in the cloud, and access to cloud resources still needs to be managed.

The biggest infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud is Amazon Web Services (AWS), which hosts big hitters like Netflix, Expedia and Adobe. Other players like Microsoft’s Azure and Rackspace are also great solutions and are catching up, especially among small and medium-sized organizations, but AWS’s documentation is easier to follow and better organized.

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Bill Gogel is an IT Audit Manager at Brown Smith Wallace, where he is responsible for providing internal and IT audit and IT consulting services to a range of industries, including technology, telecommunications, manufacturing, health care, government and financial services. He has experience providing ongoing PCI consulting and IT auditing services.