NSA spying poisons the cloud market: survey

Summary: A PriceWaterhouseCoopers survey found 54 percent of German companies find the cloud risky after learning of NSA spying. An earlier study by PwC found that 84 percent of CEOs were confident about cyber security. If they only knew the truth.

The German survey - reported on by GigaOm - should be a wakeup call for Amazon and other cloud service providers. Expect to see other European and Asian countries reflect a similar disenchantment.

In the earlier survey PWC was gentle in debunking the CEOs confidence. They asked questions to further define security leaders as opposed to the delusional on the following criteria:

Have an overall information security policyEmploy a chief information security officer or equivalent that reports to top leadershipHave measured and review the effectiveness of their security measures within the past yearUnderstand exactly what type of security events have occurred in the past year

After applying these criteria PwC found that only 17 percent of all survey respondents are ahead of the game.

Another interesting wrinkle: the companies that identify themselves as front runners spend almost as much as firms who, by their own admission, are the least prepared to run an effective security program. Maybe those security programs aren't cost-effective.

The Storage Bits take
This week's Great Debate asked if companies should take NSA spying into account in their cloud buying. In arguing yes, I made the point that cloud service providers owe their customers the best possible security - including against NSA spying - because even NSA analysts can be corrupted.

Now it is clear, if unsurprising, that cloud service providers must also take security much more seriously than they have in the past. The US won't always be the world's largest IT market and even now its global market share is shrinking. American companies need to up their game to remain leaders.

Comments welcome, of course. How does your company rate on the PwC criteria? How complacent is senior management?

Robin Harris has been messing with computers for over 30 years and selling and marketing data storage for over 20 in companies large and small.