Compliance with data regulations may require that it is stored in a certain territory, and putting data on systems owned by foreign corporations is an inherent legal risk. According to Ponemon’s research, around a third of businesses have stopped or slowed adoption of cloud services because of privacy concerns – but 54 per cent believe that migration to the cloud will improve security and privacy.
There is high interest in the "Bring your own key" (BYOK) concept, where the customer controls keys used to encrypt cloud data. If revoked, even the cloud provider cannot read the data. According to the survey, 29 per cent have adopted BYOK in some measure, and 37 per cent plan to do within a year.
A telling statistic, however, is that more than 50 per cent of respondents say they are "not confident" that the SaaS and PaaS applications they use meet privacy and data protection requirements. Only just over a third evaluate such concerns before proceeding.
Microsoft sponsored this survey for a good reason. Many of the recommendations it identifies involve spending more money if you are an Office 365 or Azure customer. BYOK for Office 365 requires an E5 subscription, which is a hefty £30.80 per month, or even more for Microsoft 365, which includes a Windows Enterprise licence and "Advanced compliance."
Microsoft is already making a killing off cloud, now these fears will fuel those profits even further by upselling the BYOK…
Survey is thinly veiled marketing from Microsoft, but the issue is real