For years, the reigning argument against every impassioned proposal for the cloud has been that it’s not as secure as an on-site system. Enterprises in every industry have struggled to overcome these arguments because in many cases the concerns over a security breach could override lists of potential benefits surrounding cost, scalability, agility, and expanded features.

There were certainly ways to overcome these concerns. Many enterprises recognized that the amount of resources that a public cloud provider could pony up for securing data was far beyond what an individual business could muster. From monitoring to threat response and even physical protection, cloud data centers were well-protected.

For many enterprises, security has always been a recurring conversation in the debate about where to host particular workloads. That conversation is beginning to sound a bit different. Through broader access to security functions from managed services providers, enterprises are able to access supplemental firewalls, anti-malware, and anti-virus features that combine with additional security policies to better protect against data loss.

Cloud security company Nominet released study results recently that demonstrate the possibility for security vulnerabilities to be addressed by cloud attributes designed to protect data and applications. While over half of respondents using multi-cloud reported experiencing a breach in the last year, they also said that the risk of a breach was no higher than if they were using on-premise solutions only.

A Shift in Security Strategy: The survey results may demonstrate the shift in thinking surrounding security strategy and the cloud. The traditional approach has been to keep the most critical data on-site where it is purportedly safest. Even as respondents indicated that they still have concerns about a breach in terms of fines and bad publicity, they also plan to adopt cloud security solutions at a rate of 92%.

Firewalls and anti-virus software are still the first line of defense, but enterprises accessing cloud solutions are also using tools from managed service providers including network access controls and improved security for distributed applications. The cloud is being used as a delivery method for a wide range of security enhancements.

It doesn’t mean that the debate is over. Cloud solutions still expose enterprises to new security vulnerabilities, but increasingly the cloud is also the answer to these problems. Cloud security managed services providers are proactively serving the needs of enterprises utilizing the tools they need to be competitive in their industries.

For more information about how you can achieve all the benefits of cloud solutions while fulfilling the requirements of your security policy, contact us at eXemplify.