Cloud Computing – It’s a Question of Trust

By Raj Samani, Vice President and CTO, McAfee EMEA

Can we really trust cloud computing? Or perhaps more importantly do you trust the cloud? And does the perceived lack of transparency, combined with recent negative headlines, impact future investments in cloud computing?

In conjunction with the Cloud Security Alliance, we have prepared a survey to gain a better understanding of the perceived trust within cloud computing. Our Cloud Trust survey is intended to tell us about levels of trust and where the fundamental differences lie between certain geographies and organizations (by size).

The reality is that cloud computing plays an integral role in our digital lives and allows all of us to focus on what matters most while outsourcing the work required to deliver our email, host our websites and much else. Gaining an understanding of the emerging security and privacy requirements is important. It gives us a platform that we can trust and rely on, both as consumers and within our work lives.

We therefore really need your help. Please take five minutes to provide your feedback. Let us know your perception of how trustworthy cloud computing is and has been, and more importantly the measures that are required for the future cloud. The survey can be found here.

So far the results make for some really interesting reading, most notably that the cloud is seen as considerably more trustworthy than 12 months ago. We will keep the survey open a little longer and publish a report based on the findings. This will help all of us as an industry introduce the necessary trust within the cloud computing services that we rely on.