Most businesses misguided on responsibility for cloud data protection

A survey is showing that more than 80% of organisations mistakenly believe that their cloud service provider is accountable for data protection.

Research has found that around eight of 10 businesses incorrectly think their data protection is the responsibility of their cloud service provider.

Veritas Technologies undertook a survey of around 1,200 global organisations, from this survey it was found around 83% said cloud firms are responsible for data protection and 69% thought they could move all of the responsibility for their data protection, privacy and compliance to the provider.

Jason Tooley, vice-president of northern Europe for Veritas, said it was the responsibility of the business to ensure data compliance, not the cloud provider.

“Although cloud providers have a duty to ensure they help keep data secure and readily available, the ultimate responsibility of maintaining a compliance position with regulations such as GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation] lies with the organisation that owns the information,” he said.

“With the recently introduced UK Data Protection Bill, businesses should remember they are the data controller, and they must comply with all the obligations that GDPR imposes.”

Part of this survey found that spending globally on cloud technologies is forecasted to increase from 12% of IT budgets in 2017 to 18% through the course of the next two years. Many businesses would like to use multiple cloud platforms, and around 58% of businesses that already use cloud platforms say they will be expanding in this area.

Interestingly through this whole survey that whilst over half of organisations (56&) have a cloud first mentality for deploying new applications, in the UK this figure is only around 32%.