Citizens rely on government to keep their data safe, wherever it’s held and whatever technology they use, however, a recent survey into Central Government, Local Authorities and the Blue Light & Justice sector reveals that citizen data is handled precariously with a disturbing lack of confidence in exactly how (or if) it is protected when using cloud models.
GovNewsDirect conducted Your Data in The Cloud: Manage, Move & Protect 2016 public sector survey alongside NetApp, which has turned up some pretty startling results – if you’re at all security conscious that is.
Firstly, a fifth of those surveyed said they had little or no confidence that their data is secured or could be recovered in the event of an emergency. Considering how much of the data we rely on is managed by government and third parties and dependent on their services remaining available etc, this is quite a big deal. To say that 20% of citizens aren’t confident their healthcare data, criminal records and such are being held safely means that people aren’t trusting public bodies in a way they once did.
But why is that? It’s common knowledge that trust in governments and elected officials is at a historic low, but something like data protection may not be influenced by this.
Another key finding of the survey was that a majority of respondent were not sure how their data was protected with their cloud provider. So perhaps it’s down to people not knowing enough about data security to say they’re confident their data is being kept safe. However you could also put the lack of confidence down to constant breaches in the news, high-profile cloud hacks such as ‘celebgate’ and other leaks.
But there’s more information from the survey that may yet shed some light; almost a 1/3 of respondents who had already deployed workload in the cloud had or were planning to repatriate their workload to a different cloud provider. So service providers could be falling short of the mark. The fact that 1 in 3 customers appear unsatisfied with current services, or providers aren’t offering what respondents require makes a clear case for cloud hosting providers needing to set up their game.
So how can they do that? Perhaps by providing security solutions as part of a package, with customers being able to add and remove services as they see fit and paying a premium for such offerings. Perhaps the cloud industry needs to get better at governing itself and setting standards. Either way, something clearly needs to change.
Want to see the full survey? Click here
