No trust in US cloud providers

According to a study by the National Initiative for Information and Internet Security (NIFIS), only cloud providers that are subject to restrictive data protection laws can guarantee sufficient data security. These are German and other European providers in particular. According to the study, 80% of the companies are convinced of this.

According to NIFIS Chairman Attorney Thomas Lapp, distrust in the German business community is very high: "The spying on German and European companies by U.S. authorities, some of which was even legalized by corresponding laws, has left its mark. So has the voluntary sharing of company data by U.S. cloud providers." Accordingly, 93% of the companies surveyed judge U.S. service providers and all others that cannot escape the access of British and U.S. intelligence agencies to have failed to act decisively and will not find a satisfactory data protection solution in the foreseeable future. The majority of German businesses (79%) are convinced that U.S. providers will lose market share if they cannot make it plausible that data is secure with them.

The fight against industrial espionage

Since the PRISM-tapping scandal, a majority of German businesses believe that data stored in the cloud is very much at risk (86% Consent). Since then, German companies have therefore become considerably more aware of the risks posed by cloud computing (83%). "German businesses have declared war on industrial espionage," emphasizes Lapp. "Accordingly, 81% of companies are stepping up measures to protect themselves from spying." According to the study, the PRISM and follow-up scandals have now sensitized 88% of German companies regarding data protection. For 79% of the companies, protection against hacker attacks is the focus of their efforts.

The current study "IT Security and Data Protection 2015" by NIFIS can be requested free of charge: team@euromarcom.de