Why more and more companies are investing in the cloud and security

The most effective cyber security measures may have once entailed the purchase of expensive hardware and software products, but if there is one route to effective cyber security that has arisen in recent years, it has to be the cloud.

Not only were 95% of respondents to RightScale”s recent State of the Cloud Survey using the cloud,  but almost 70% of those surveyed for PwC”s Global State of Information Security Survey 2016 said their company was using cloud-based cyber security services.

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Continued security risks demand a more innovative approach

If one were in any doubt about the considerable scale of the cyber security risk facing businesses today, they would only need to look at some of the other findings of PwC”s research – such as that 2015 saw a 38% rise in detected security incidents compared to the previous year.

There was also a 56% jump in the theft of “hard” intellectual property during the year, with such elevated risks prompting businesses to invest in core safeguards ranging from employee training and awareness programs to threat assessments – as well as the cloud.

The cloud enables a high standard of affordable cyber security

Cloud computing wasn”t always trusted as a cyber security solution – companies were anxious about storing sensitive data off-site.

In recent years, however, changes in attitudes and the continued evolution of cloud computing technology have made cloud-based cyber security a logical route for small and medium-sized companies otherwise unable to invest in the same level of security as larger corporations.

The very basis of cloud computing on the storage and processing of data on remote servers on the Internet, rather than on local servers and personal computers, allows the leading cloud migration specialists like RedPixie to call upon almost unlimited computing power. This, in turn, allows for much more rapid cyber security responses and solutions.

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At the simplest level, cloud computing can help to solve the problem of lost laptops and the associated loss of the sensitive data that they contain. When this data is instead stored in the cloud, it can be accessed regardless of the whereabouts of any machines, with data even able to be remotely wiped from misplaced laptops to prevent it getting into the wrong hands.

Security is far from the only benefit of the cloud

Of course, switching to the cloud and the Internet-based computing that it enables doesn”t have to be motivated solely by security concerns.

Businesses of all sizes and types are discovering, for example, just how flexible the cloud allows them to be, with regard to the convenient scaling up or down of their server capacity in line with their requirements at a given time.

The cloud is also a godsend in disaster recovery situations, allowing smaller businesses to get back up and running swiftly and with minimal longer-term data loss or compromise to other aspects of their operations.

Other organisations decide to switch to the cloud on account of the low or non-existent capital expenditure costs, the rolling out of free regular software updates by cloud providers and the greater ease of collaboration that it makes possible, even between team members based on opposite sides of the world.

For firms concerned about the many cyber security risks that still confront them in the modern world, as well as a wide range of other factors, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify not investing in the cloud.

That is especially so given the discovery by Dell”s Global Technology Adoption Index 2015 that organisations actively using cloud, mobility, big data or security technologies are experiencing up to 53% higher revenue growth rates than those that have not invested in such technologies.