There's a lot of hope and a lot of development going into pay-as-you-go cloud-based services these days. But for all that promise, new research suggests that IT managers remain skeptical about the security and loss of control associated with cloud computing environments.
According to the ISACA IT Risk/Reward Barometer survey, nearly half of the 1,809 U.S. IT professionals queried said that the potential risks associated with cloud computing outweigh its many benefits. The survey also showed that 10% of respondents' organizations plan to use cloud computing for mission-critical IT services and about one-quarter do not plan to use the cloud for any IT services.
"The cloud represents a major change in how computing resources will be utilized, so its not surprising that IT professionals have concerns about risk vs. reward trade-offs," said Robert Stroud, international vice president of ISACA. "But risk and value are two sides of the same coin. If cloud computing is treated as a major governance initiative involving a broad set of stakeholders, it has the potential to yield benefits that can equal or outweigh the risks."
