While cloud computing has become one of the most ubiquitous IT terms of late, security in the cloud remains one of the foremost concerns among IT decision makers within enterprises and small to medium-sized businesses considering or already deploying cloud-based services.

Certainly, there are several security implications organizations need to think about when they make the transition to the cloud. Application security and data protection lead the list of considerations. In addition, virus or phishing attacks to systems and networks are a very real concern – but are they any more of a threat in the cloud than they are on-premise?

In many cases, security concerns are a question of perception versus reality, according to Jeff Echols, senior director of product and solutions marketing at CommVault (News - Alert).

“A perceived lack of cloud security can sometimes impede an IT organization’s path to the cloud as an option for data storage. Many industries have always been held to a higher standard when it comes to regulatory compliance and data retention, which makes them reluctant to adopt cloud services because of perceived potential risks,” according to Echols. “This unjustified fear of lax cloud security and support of compliance requirements means IT organizations could miss out on all of the immediate operational and cost benefits that come with storing data in the cloud.”

However, in reality, he says, all of the pieces are in place to enable secure and compliant cloud-based storage environments, and the technology is sound.

“With the rising number of utility-like cloud storage vendors emerging, they are enabling companies to grow on demand, allowing them to handle massive amounts of data from anywhere, at any time. IT decision makers should rethink their position on cloud security by looking at the facts,” maintains Echols.

Companies are turning to cloud storage for the economic advantage of utility storage instead of the higher capital and operational costs of building and managing remote data centers.

“Cloud storage is one of the first offers some enticing advantages. It’s pay as you go, with no capital outlay and no need to buy extra equipment in anticipation of future storage demands,” Echols says. “Because cloud storage providers leverage multi-tenant architectures, infrastructure costs are shared across many users. You scale storage dynamically and pay only for what you use. This helps lower costs substantially versus on-site solutions, which require additional provisioning, power, cooling costs and more.”

Cloud-based storage delivers several key use cases to help solve today’s data management problems, he says, including:

• Tiering data retention to cloud storage, alleviates the need to expand data center capacity or operational costs;
• Archiving stale data to cloud-based storage to free up existing space within the data center; 
• Cost-effective disaster recovery for small- and medium-sized organizations without large upfront and operational investment;
• Content indexing data before moving to cloud to meet compliance requirements and minimize search/retrieval times during eDiscovery operations; and
• Remote office backup directly to cloud-based storage.

While cloud computing is still in its infancy, more IT decision makers are realizing the best – and perhaps safest – way to get more storage is to work with a cloud provider to move business-critical data into the cloud.