A panel of IT experts and information security practitioners warned that SME’s need more education when it comes to cloud computing and cybersecurity.
Commenting on the rising adoption of the cloud among businesses amid growing concerns about data security, Catalin Cosoi, chief security strategist at Bitdefender, said: "Years ago, firms were used to having their own data centres and keeping control of information. With cloud computing, businesses are uncertain about who has ultimate control of the management of this data and how secure this information is. With more education, however, SMEs will see that this problem is quite easy to solve."
Désiré Athow, industry journalist, outlined some of the key challenges that organisations face in terms of cloud migration. "To put it bluntly, an SME has other things to take care of other than just learning theories behind cloud computing," he explained. "They don’t necessarily understand how much of a transition it may be from their current system to a cloud-based one. There needs to be more focused education around not only what cloud means but also the subsets of cloud computing."
Addressing key cyberthreats, Richard Hijlkema, Finance & ICT Manager at Gemeente Echt – Susteren, pointed to encryption and firewalls as key security methods and stated: "Attacks are increasing and it’s not if but when." Erivaldo Guimaraes, Researcher at London South Bank University, added: "As the technology is improving, also the cyber attack methods and options are improving, so…they have more security but they may also have more fails than ever before."
The key insights were captured at Infosecurity Europe 2014, London, last month for a video sponsored by Bitdefender, an antivirus and cloud security solutions provider.
The feedback also addressed the benefits of storing data via the cloud, with Bitdefender’s CTO, Bogdan Dumitru, noting: "Moving to the cloud means that you do not have to frequently update or patch the solution and doing all of the IT work that you used to do in your IT department or data centre."
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