Security concerns about the public cloud are on the decline – but they continue to slow down adoption.

In fact, in a recent survey of hundreds of IT decision makers, security was the leading reason (48.5% of respondents) why businesses haven’t yet made the leap to the cloud.

In a strange twist, though, that same study — conducted by a cloud migration expert SADA — showed that cloud security was also the key driver of its adoption (51.5%). So, simply put: cloud security is both scaring business away and attracting it en masse.

What gives? Office 365 Adoption Shift is slow-moving.

As the ZDnet writer Joe McKendrick puts it, public opinion about the public cloud is shifting, but it’s a trend that has been evolving — slowly — over the last few years.

The reality is that public cloud has its own security risks and concerns, just like anything. But when closely examined, most leaders would have to agree the cloud offers more security, better compliance options, far more control and transparency than the fears would have you believe.

This was the key topic of discussion in our latest webinar on Office 365, where we dug into the security and legal concerns present with adopting the cloud productivity suite.

Key Security Concerns with Office 365: 

The core concerns about Office 365 centre around security, access, visibility, and encryption, namely:

• Is my content safe in your data centers?
• Who has access to my organization’s content in the service?
• What visibility do I have into the activity on my content in the service?
• Can I encrypt everything so that it’s not possible for you (Microsoft) to have access to my content?

As we have shown in our expert-hosted webinar, which was attended by IT leaders from across North America, is that under each of those key categories, Office 365 delivers a safe, secure and business friendly set of tools and solutions.

• Security: Office 365 offers the highest security on all levels, from content to the network to the admin and all things in between. On top of this, it offers continuous security best practices and services, like penetration testing and granular end-user controls over configurations.
• Privacy: With it’s “privacy by design” ethos, no one is ever able to use your data in a way that you do not approve of. This means Microsoft builds no back doors and provides no unfettered governmental access to your data.
• Compliance: Microsoft’s broad and thorough approach to compliance is a big positive and helps to relieve a major concern many businesses are struggling to overcome. With it, you meet out-of-the-box standards such ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP/FISMA and SOC. You also have access to deep analytical auditing and reporting and much control over how your data is handled and where.
• Transparency: With the “Transparency Hub” you get up to date insight on how law enforcement and other agencies attempt to request data and what Microsoft provided. You can easily see where your data is stored geographically, too, at any given time.

Of course, this does not mean that you are completely “off the hook.” Security on the cloud is always a shared responsibility — and you are still charged with much of the access, admin, and connections with the cloud applications that could provide other security issues not handled by Microsoft.

For a much deeper dive into all of the topics above, watch the recorded webinar above.

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