MIT CIO Panel: Security in the Cloud Remains Top Adoption Issue

Backupify recently attended the MIT CIO Symposium where our CEO Rob May took part in the afternoon keynote panel session “The Evolving Cloud Agenda.” The panel discussed how organizations are adopting/have adopted the cloud and the issues that companies continue to face regarding their virtual infrastructure.

Michael Hickins of the Wall Street Journal served as moderator to a panel that included Scott Blanchette of Vanguard Health Systems, John Roese of EMC, Richard Dorough of PwC Forensic Services, Eugene Shablygin of WWPass and our own Rob May.

One of the major issues discussed revolved around cloud security. Nothing new, cloud security still remains the biggest hurdle to cloud adoption. Many companies in regulated industries, such as the healthcare industry, are not venturing near the cloud. While some of these companies are very interested in moving to the cloud, there is still a fear of losing control of their data.

While cloud-to-cloud backup can alleviate these fears for many companies, those in regulated industries have an entirely different security threshold compared to their not so regulated counterparts. This led to an important discussion around security and data ownership. Who really owns the data – the company or Amazon/Google?

The panel felt that as long as the proper regulations and frameworks are in place, then companies should feel more cloud confident. There was an optimism among the panel members that one day security will no longer be an issue to address. What are your thoughts on security and the cloud?

If interested in hearing more, watch the video:

Backupify participates in 2013 MIT CIO Symposium panel discussion from Backupify on Vimeo.