Corporate IT Pros are Skeptical of the Cloud, but Feds March On

While the Obama administration hurries to save billions of dollars by moving federal computing online, a new study shows that few information technology managers at leading-edge companies believe Internet "cloud" storage is as secure as in-house data centers.

One third of private-sector IT practitioners questioned by the Ponemon Institute believe so-called infrastructure-as-a-service providers protect e-mail, documents and other business data as well as on-site data centers. The administration aims to wind down many of the government's more than 2,000 computer warehouses to save $5 billion, largely by outsourcing the computer processing to Web services providers, like Amazon.

Interestingly, in the business survey, a larger percentage, 50 percent, of the folks paid to worry about security and privacy safeguards -- compliance officers -- believe the cloud offers equivalent protections.

The independent survey of 1,018 professionals, including about 600 IT managers and 400 compliance supervisors, was sponsored by data security firm Vormetric. All respondents were familiar with the principles of cloud computing.

"The findings reveal the gulf between those working in IT and those in compliance about service provider controls, top security measures and roles and responsibilities," the report states. "The study's goal is to learn how organizations resolve (or fail to resolve) the tradeoff between cloud efficiencies and IT security."

A new roadmap from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, highly-anticipated within Washington contracting circles, defines IAAS as an online product that provides the customer with a complete computer processing environment. The cloud standards, which were released on Tuesday, explain that the consumer does not have the power to control the underlying networks, but can manage operating systems, storage and software programs.