StorageCraft Global Study: Cloud Adoption Drives the Need for a Greater Understanding of Security Responsibility

Our mission at StorageCraft is to protect all data and ensure its constant availability. That’s why we need to keep our finger on the pulse of the marketplace as we constantly work harder to meet our customers’ needs. To that end, we recently completed our annual independent global research study on the experiences and attitudes of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) around data protection and recovery. Some of the results were as expected, while others were quite surprising.

COVID-19 Drove Cloud Adoption

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic accelerated cloud adoption in a big way. Here’s what the survey respondents had to say:

• 47% accelerated their adoption of cloud services for data management 
• 59% increased the use of cloud backup services 
• 39% increasingly rely on cloud services for data recovery
• 56% had increased the use of the cloud for IT infrastructure (IaaS)

Public Cloud Security Misconceptions

On the surprising side, the study highlighted the lack of clarity and confidence ITDM’s have in regards to data protection and recovery in public clouds. For example:

• 45% believe data backed up to a public cloud (AWS, Azure, Office 365, etc.) is not as safe as data backed up on-premises. This concern was most prevalent in organizations with over 1PB of data, where 69% believe data backed up to a public cloud is not as safe as data backed up on-premises.
• 44% of respondents believe the protection and recovery of data stored in public clouds is the cloud provider's responsibility instead of the data owner’s. 

The fact that nearly half of respondents were unaware that protecting and recovering their data stored in public clouds is shared between the data owner and the cloud provider should be cause for serious concern. It’s important for any company that’s transitioning to public cloud services and applications to understand where its security responsibilities lie.

Barriers to Cloud Services Adoption

While the cloud is an attractive solution for many of today’s data protection and recovery challenges, some companies still see major barriers to its adoption:

• 40% cited regulations and compliance concerns
• 43% worried about lack of control over their data
• 48% said security was a concern 

MSPs Matter More Than Ever

More and more companies are looking to cloud services as part of a hybrid data center strategy aimed at helping manage the cost and complexity of their data center environments. That’s because these environments have become even harder to manage with the migration to remote work. Here’s where managed services providers (MSPs) enter the picture. MSPs help ensure that their customers have a well-defined and tested data protection and recovery plan in place. That explains why many organizations will increase their spending with MSPs on these services, including:

• 38% on backing up on-premises data to the cloud
• 37% on cloud backup of remote offices
• 18% on cloud disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)

Need Help with the Cloud?

StorageCraft has been innovating advanced data management, protection, and recovery solutions for nearly two decades. We can be your guide to both understanding and implementing the best cloud solution for your specific needs. Find out more by scheduling a demo with a StorageCraft engineer.

About the research conducted by Dimensional Research: A total of 709 qualified individuals completed the research study. All participants had budget or technical decision-making responsibility for data management, data protection, and storage solutions at a company with 100 - 2,500 employees. The survey was fielded in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, United Kingdom, and the United States.