As opposed to small business and enterprise settings that pioneered cloud computing implementations and drew the industry forward, the regulated industries have been slow to adopt the innovation up until a couple of years ago.
The specificities of the public platform and the associated client-vendor relations were primary concerns for the decision-makers in healthcare, finance and legal organizations, which resulted in a hampered migration to the cloud. Over the past few years, however, cloud-based systems have seen a rise in the regulated industries and brought the necessary IT innovation to these settings.
In relation to this trend, recent research suggests that the average healthcare institution in the US uses 928 cloud computing solutions and uploads 6.8 terabytes to the cloud a month. This is certainly a significant growth from 2013, but is only one of the challenges the industry has managed to overcome.
Namely, the use of cloud solutions in healthcare is still largely unsecured, as only 7% of solutions are found to meet the necessary security standards. Similarly, finance institutions, which represent a major target of cyber-attacks, are mainly relying on hybrid environment to fully protect their data. A survey of finance industry professionals showed that 86% of respondents still have considerable concerns regarding cloud security management and are yet to develop strategies to mitigate the risks.
Therefore, it’s unsurprising that the US government sector took some serious steps to enable secure cloud implementations across all industries, including the government itself. Namely, local governments are pushing the cloud adoption in both their own organizations and small businesses to encourage a larger-scale IT innovation in their respective regions. Coupled with the innovative solutions launched in 2015, such initiatives promote the cloud’s potential, while at the same time ensuring its proper implementation.
Among the solutions that helped accelerating the transition, IBM Cloud Security Enforcer and Salesforce Shield are just some of the new platforms designed for the regulated industries specifically. Now, the institutions that operate with highly sensitive data have a variety of solutions at their disposal to handle security risks and innovate their IT infrastructure.
More information on the state of the cloud in regulated industries and best practices for sensitive data management in the cloud are available in the recent research by SecureLink. For download visit HERE.
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Sarah Green is a tech journalist and cyber security researcher who explores how new technologies are reshaping business settings.
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