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Fears over cloud security will continue to linger, but the situation is improving: almost two thirds (64%) of enterprises polled by analyst house Clutch argue cloud infrastructure is more secure than legacy systems.

36% of the 300 respondents polled said cloud was much more secure than legacy infrastructure, compared to 28% who argued it was “somewhat” more secure. Only 11% of respondents argued cloud was in any way less secure, with 1% saying it was ‘much less’.

Yet the majority of respondents don’t entirely trust their chosen vendor; three quarters of respondents say they add in their own security on top of the vendor’s solution. Additional security measures enterprises put in range from data encryption (61%), to identity access policies (52%), and regular audits (48%). More than half of enterprises polled say they spend between $10,000 and $50,000 on these measures.

Clutch argues cloud infrastructure offers three features which makes it more secure for enterprises; the infrastructure is monitored at all times, the security features are multi-faceted, and central management ensures security systems remain up to date at all times. “Legacy systems are more difficult to keep updated because enterprises may have to go around to several hundred thousand platforms to check and update security systems,” said cloud analyst David Linthicum. “It’s easier for legacy systems to fall behind in terms of updates.”

Yet security remains the biggest issue companies have encountered with cloud infrastructure in the past year. 31% of those polled cited it, ahead of training (28%), increased cost (28%), and downtime (25%). For Jason Reichl, CEO of Go Nimbly, IT teams struggle when more transparency is required. “Because of this, the IT team needs to build new security policies to create the impression that a business is investing a lot more resources in security,” he said. “Truthfully though, a company should already have had these security measures in place.”

You can find out more about the report here.

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