ISACA Says 2010 Will be Year of the Cloud

Business and IT Managers Should Take the Time to Review Their Security Systems

(02.03.10) - Research just released by Resource on Demand, an IT recruitment firm, claims to show the company has been receiving a record number of enquiries for salesforce and software-as-a-service (SaaS) specialists during the first month of the year. According to Rolf von Roessing, international vice president of ISACA, the not-for-profit global association of IT security, audit and governance professionals, the 233 percent surge in recruitment requests seen by the firm during January signals that, after brief gestation, cloud computing is firmly set to take off into the mainstream in 2010.

"The financial and organisational benefits of switching to cloud-based storage and systems are clearly driving this surge in demand, as witnessed by Gartner’s recent prediction that, within the next four years, 20 percent of firms will have no appreciable local resources as a result from switching," he said.

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"It's important, however, that in the rush to embrace the obvious benefits of the cloud, businesses do not overlook the security implications of extending their IT resource into what is, to all intents and purposes, a virtual environment," he added.

Business and IT managers should take the time to review their security systems and resources, and ask themselves whether their information security management can effectively defend their data and other assets in the cloud, the ISACA leader went on to say.

And, even if an initial budget to extend and enhance a firm’s IT security resources to fully support the cloud is not apparently available, IT managers should not lose sight of the possibility that some of the direct cost savings that arise from cloud migration can be invested in security facilities, he explained.

Von Roessing, who has extensive experience in the financial services security industry, said that, in May of last year, ISACA joined the Cloud Security Alliance to promote good practices on the cloud security front (www.cloudsecurityalliance.org).

ISACA, a global association of 86,000 IT governance, security and audit professionals, also published a cloud computing white paper, titled "Cloud Computing: Business Benefits With Security, Governance and Assurance Perspectives" which provides a road map for developing positive and secure relationships with cloud providers. (ISACA: ra)