Picture credit: SeniorLiving.Org

Three quarters of businesses in the financial sector are still concerned about adopting cloud-based applications, according to survey data from the NCC Group.

The research, which surveyed CIOs from financial services firms with more than 1000 employees, saw that 72% of respondents fear the cloud because of concerns over data not being backed up, and issues of disaster recovery.

Two in five (40%) respondents aren’t currently using cloud because they fear sudden data loss on a mass scale, while three quarters (74%) of firms would need at least a week to implement a disaster recovery plan – 5% said it would take two to three months.

This is a particularly interesting admission given some of the scare stories from cloud computing firms over the past several months. These have ranged from the likes of Joyent and Autotask, which went down for a matter of hours, to vendors such as CodeSpaces, which was forced to cease trading altogether after what it described as a “well-orchestrated” DDoS attack.

“Without a proper disaster recovery plan, a company can quickly fall to its knees,” said Daniel Liptrott, managing director of NCC Group’s escrow division. “However, there are comprehensive backup solutions available to those using cloud applications, so businesses needn’t shy away from cloud adoption due to fear of data loss.”

Liptrott added that business spend an awful lot on cloud services, but comparatively little in keeping operations afloat. It’s an important point to make, and a part of the IT infrastructure companies seem to forget. As Gartner analyst Kyle Hilgendorf wrote, cloud exits are not nearly as sexy as cloud deployments – and your business can be brutally exposed when the proverbial excrement hits the air oscillating machine.

Recent figures from cloud provider Databarracks found that only 30% of smaller businesses had a business continuity plan in place, compared to 54% of medium organisations and 73% of large businesses.