Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Cloud Computing Adoption Growing In China, Hong Kong

Cloud computing adoption is on the rise in Hong Kong and China, according to a survey. Results showed that 20 percent of enterprises plan to use it for non-mission-critical IT services this year, doubling the number from last year. Meanwhile, the number of enterprises that plan to use cloud for mission-critical services rose from 7 percent to 11 percent, and those that do not use cloud for any IT services has decreased by 6 points to 41 percent.

The survey also found that 40 percent of the information security and IT audit professionals in Hong Kong and China believe the risk of employees using personal mobile devices for work activities outweigh the benefits, with 33 percent believing that mobile devices owned by employees pose the greatest risk, compared to 29 percent who chose work-supplied flash drives as riskiest. More than 70 percent of respondents reported that their enterprises have a security policy in place for mobile computing, yet, 39 percent believe that there is a need to update or better communicate theirs. In light of this, 35 percent view that increasing risk awareness among employees is the most important action that enterprises should take to improve IT risk management.

The survey also looked at what IT professionals thought about their enterprises' staffing requirements. With information security and risk management becoming increasingly important for businesses, there is no surprise that a high percentage (64 percent) of respondents expects their organization's staffing needs for information security to increase over the next 12 months, with 59 percent expecting the need to add risk management staff.

Comment from Michael Yung, president of the ISACA China Hong Kong Chapter: With the China economy growing at a rapid pace, enterprises' needs for agility and scalability have never been greater. Cloud computing certainly fits the bill, and there is no surprise to see cloud adoption increasing so quickly here. Many C-suite decision makers have commissioned their IT professionals to carefully assess the applicability and analyze the risk against benefits for deploying cloud technology. The next 12 months will be interesting, as a number of them will start to deploy cloud computing in areas they think will reap benefits to the organizations. Today, enterprises need to place stronger emphasis on and better align three levels of governance, namely corporate, IT and data governance. They hold the key to the mitigation of cloud-related risks.

About the survey: ISACA polled 2,765 ISACA members from around the world, including 80 members in Hong Kong and China, in March 2011.

Contact: http://www.isaca.org

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