Barracuda, a leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, reveals the the major security threats are restricting faster adoption of public cloud in India. Commissioned by Barracuda, the research is based on a survey conducted on APAC, EMEA & the US based IT decision makers to capture their experiences & attitude about moving infrastructure to the public cloud, concerns restricting adoption, and the security & networking solutions being implemented to overcome them.

This survey encompasses individual contributors and team managers from organizations of all sizes & across a broad range of sectors, with responsibility for or knowledge of their organization’s cloud infrastructure. Overall, the study indicates that while adoption rates for public cloud continue to grow, security is still the number one roadblock, which is understandable considering the volume & variety of threats organizations presently face.

The key highlights from the report include the following:

1. Organizations are moving infrastructure to public cloud: On an average, organizations presently have about 57 percent of their infrastructure running on cloud. In the next five years, respondents expect to see around 74 percent of IT infrastructure running in the public cloud. Moreover, APAC Organizations which are currently are at 46 percent, expect an estimate of 73 percent.

The study indicates that while adoption rates for public cloud continue to grow, security is still the number one roadblock

2. Security is the topmost concern restricting faster adoption of public cloud: As per 84 percent respondents, security concerns restrict their organization’s adoption of public cloud. These security concerns include the security of public cloud infrastructure, the impact of cyber attacks & the security of applications deployed in public cloud.

3. Integrations/network is a major concern with public cloud adoption: Concerns regarding integrating public cloud with legacy technologies, better integration with private cloud, and enhanced integration with on-premises infrastructure play a major part in restricting faster adoption of public cloud.

4. Secure software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) fully integrated into public cloud is the solution of choice: Along with 38 percent of respondents already up with SD-WAN, another 41 percent are either in the process of deploying or expecting to implement it within the next 12 months. Being used by more than half of enterprises that have added security to their public cloud, the popularity of SD-WAN in APAC region is only 26 percent & about 34 percent of companies are in the process of deploying the same.

As more IT infrastructure moves to public cloud, cloud providers will offer more native network capabilities, and public cloud will expand to include more network functionality. The vast majority of organizations need their security vendors to offer advanced security & cloud connectivity tightly integrated with the major cloud platforms.