Fifty percent of firms say cloud computing improves security

360°IT study among 271 IT managers this month (May) also finds that a fifth of respondents believe there will be no improvement, while a quarter reckon cloud computing may even be detrimental. As for the reality check, self acclaimed expert Richard Hall, CEO of CloudOrigin, suggests that the current trend of businesses migrating their IT systems into the cloud does not mean reduced security. Hall, who boasts more than 20 years in the IT business, believes that cloud technology will indeed raise the industry's game on the security front. "After decades performing forensic and preventative IT security reviews within banking and government, it was clear to me that the bulk of security breaches and data losses occur because of a weakness of internal controls," he says. He makes the point that, because of the complete automation by public cloud providers, dynamic provision, use and re-purposing of a virtual server occurs continuously within encrypted sub-nets. Also, the process, he says, occurs out of sight of operations staff and without any of the manual interventions that might introduce unintended weaknesses. "That's why solutions built on commodity infrastructure, provided by the likes of Amazon Web Services, have already achieved the highest standards of operational compliance and audit possible)," insists Hall.