Many financial firms are slowly putting more stock in the cloud. That’s a key finding from a new Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) survey, titled How Cloud is Being Used in the Financial Sector. The survey targeted executives from banking, insurance and investment firms around the world. While the survey found that cloud computing is becoming more and more prevalent throughout the financial sector, many respondents indicated having less than 50 percent of a solidified, concerted cloud strategy with controls and security being a main concern.
Financial services firms are also eager to see increased transparency and better auditing controls (80 percent) from their cloud providers, even more so than better data encryption (57 percent). In understanding why companies are moving to the cloud, respondents indicated that flexible infrastructure capacity was at top of their list (68 percent), followed closely by the need for reduced time for provisioning (63 percent). The top services and features being adopted when moving to the cloud include CRM (46 percent), application development (45 percent), and email (41 percent), rather than backend services (20 percent) or virtual desks (14 percent).
DBK Module 8 covers cloud computing tips.