Survey: SMBs Worry Less About Cloud Security

In any list of objections that customers raise to going to the cloud, security is prominent.

Evidence is emerging that among small and medium-sized businesses, though, security may be considered more of a feature than a bug for cloud services.

Earlier this week, Microsoft published highlights of a survey of SMBs in the United States. According to Microsoft, the survey found:

• 35 percent of companies surveyed report "noticeably higher levels of security since moving to the cloud."
  
  
• 32 percent say they spend less time worrying about the threat of cyberattacks.
  
  
• Almost a third (32 percent) spend less time each week managing security than companies not using the cloud.
  
  
• SMBs using the cloud are five times more likely to have reduced what they spend on managing security as a percentage of overall IT budget.

It's probably true that data is more secure for many SMBs in the cloud. The cloud service providers argue that professional datacenter administrators at huge cloud providers can run a more sophisticated, secure and patched environment. That's a compelling argument.

On the other hand, of course, cloud providers' infrastructures are more tempting targets than the servers of a small company. And are the cloud-using SMBs who are spending less time worrying about security doing enough to secure the connections between their cloud services and their on-premises systems?

There's no historical run of this survey referenced, so it's hard to tell if SMB attitudes are changing. Meanwhile, the fact that Microsoft felt the need to share the results suggests that it's still running into plenty of questions, even from SMBs, on the issue of cloud security.

What's your take. Should SMBs really feel safer in the cloud? Leave a comment below or e-mail me at sbekker@rcpmag.com.

Posted by Scott Bekker on May 16, 2012 at 11:58 AM