Security is the top concern restricting faster public cloud adoption in APAC

Digital transformation has been a buzz term for CIOs in APAC for years. While APAC is catching up with the global digital transformation race, organizations are hesitating to adopt public cloud infrastructure, with most saying security is the top concern.

Public cloud adoption is not as fast as expected

Barracuda’s latest global cloud research report titled Future Shock: The Cloud Is the New Network surveyed 750 global IT decision makers across the U.S., EMEA and APAC. The research found that, compared to the overall global respondents (20%),  APAC organizations (26%) are expecting a faster cloud adoption rate in five years’ time to improve data storage, data analysis, or application hosting performance. Yet, public cloud has not grown as fast as expected when compared to similar research back in 2017. Overall, 45 percent of IT infrastructure is running in the cloud today, which previous respondents assumed would reach 55 percent by 2019. Why? It could be that security concerns have started to surface over the intervening period, constraining investments and cloud growth.

Concerns around security, legacy technology, and skills required

A full 85 percent of APAC respondents shared that security concerns have restricted their organization’s adoption of the public cloud, compared to 70 percent of total respondents. These concerns focus mainly around security of public cloud infrastructure (46%), applications deployed in public cloud (37%), and the impacts of cyber-attacks (34%). It is not surprising that security concerns are top of mind, as 75 percent of global respondents have already been targeted by a cyber-attack, up from 56 percent in 2017. APAC is particularly at risk to cyber crime because of its high digital connectivity, mounting cross-border transactions and data, and relatively weak regulations. For instance, 86 percent of Hong Kong and Indian organizations say they have suffered from cyber-attacks, 11 percentage points higher than overall respondents.

Other key blockers are integration with legacy technology and the skills required. A full 37 percent of APAC respondents say they have difficulty integrating public cloud with legacy technology, 15 percentage point higher than the U.S. (22%), partly reflecting the status of digital transformation. At the same time, APAC organizations are not receiving enough support from in-house teams (26%) or expert partners (29%) for cloud security. Some other blockers include the cost of maintenance or compliance.

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