CIO Today: IT Workers Remain Confused about Cloud Computing

Proofpoint's recent research on attitudes toward cloud computing among IT professionals (conducted with Osterman Research) has been covered in other outlets toward the end of last year, but in case you missed it, CIO Today has a good, brief summary of the findings at the following link:

CIO Today: "IT Workers Foggy About Cloud Computing"

Among the findings reported by CIO Today: "Nearly 40 percent of respondents said they were confused by the term [cloud computing] and its many different definitions... The study also found professionals split over concerns about the cloud's security, with many unconvinced of its fiscal benefits."

One of the biggest trends we've seen in the last year at Proofpoint is an increasing willingness, especially at large enterprises, to move some or all of their email security and compliance functions to the cloud. But buying cloud-based security solutions is somewhat different from buying on-premises solutions and we find that most organizations can use some pointers on what to look for when evaluating the quality and security of different "security-as-a-service" solutions.

I sat down recently with Dave Champine, Proofpoint's product manager for our SaaS email security solutions who provides some tips about how to evaluate cloud computing-based solutions and the issues enterprises should consider when moving security functions "to the cloud." You can watch that video embedded below.