Survey: Many concerned about security in the cloud

Lockheed Martin and its Cyber Security Alliance partners recently released a new white paper, Awareness, Trust, and Security to Shape Cloud Adoption.

The paper includes results of a survey that found that 70% of government technology decision makers in federal, defense/military and intelligence agencies were most concerned about data security, privacy and integrity in the cloud.

Mel Greer is chief strategist, cloud computing in Lockheed Martin’s Information Systems & Global Services.

Fed Cloud Blog brings you excerpts of his thoughts on the survey, and why so many are worried about security.

Survey Results

“Lockheed Martin is a global security company, and cybersecurity is a critical component of integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. Lockheed Martin and it’s 14 cybersecurity alliance partners came together to collaborate on this survey, and our goal was to measure awareness about cloud computing and cybersecurity-related topics. What we did was commission market connections to conduct the survey online, and we were able to reach approximately 200 government decision makers in the federal government, including defense, military services and intelligence agencies.

Our customers across the board are looking for ways to balance the speed, agility and cost advantages of the cloud with the required security, confidentiality and privacy of their data. They have a vision of what it is they want to do, and Lockheed Martin understands that vision and how to leverage new cloud services and technologies, while balancing risks with rewards and delivering a range of enterprise service offerings, including applications.”

Security Concerns

“Of the approximately 200 IT decision makers that were surveyed for this paper in the U.S. Federal defense and intelligence organizations, an overwhelming 70 percent were concerned about data, security, privacy and integrity of the data in the cloud. That’s actually not very surprising. This is in line with much of the other work that we’re doing in the cloud, as well. So, cybersecurity is certainly top of mind to agency head and agency leaders. Securing data and keeping their missions up and running is paramount to them. Cloud computing, while it offers great benefits, requires a level of understanding as highlighted in the results of this survey.

It’s our goal to continue to use our cybersecurity alliance partners and partnerships to offer this kind of awareness, to add more value in terms of introducing new and innovative cybersecurity solutions that we can intergrate with our existing technologies to deliver a seamless set of security solutions.

Many of our partners sell cloud offerings, which then Lockheed Martin delivers to our customers with an integrated overall solution. We also have Lockheed Martin-specific solutions, which we’ll be announcing soon.

Where the Cyber Alliance Comes In

“The cyber alliance is just one facet of a much larger cybersecurity effort at Lockheed Martin. The alliance was formed in 2009 and coincided with the opening of our NexGen Cyber Innovation and Technology Center in Gaithersburg, Md. The mission of the alliance is to address cybersecurity challenges through innovation and partnership, and really to work collaboratively with our partners to speed solution development to our government customers.

Cyber threats are real, so moving to a new platform like cloud computing concerns many of our customers, and this cyber alliance is actively focusing on delivering real solutions in an innovative way so those threats can be mitigated.

Possible Solutions

“One of them is the cyber range . . . [which] allows our partners, as well as our customers, to come in to the NexGen center to test out threats [and] evaluate threat vectors — whether they be in a simulated classified or unclassified environment. The range enables safe environments for attack and defense, and tests inside a customer-simulated environment, regardless of geographic location. [It is] a major differentiator in allowing our customer solutions to be tested and then evaluated in a simulated environment.”

What’s Next …

“Behind the scenes, Lockheed Martin is collaborating with its partners and testing solutions in this NexGen Center, to offer more cloud computing solutions that address both cyber and the mission needs of our customers. . . . Seamless security is critical to protecting our customers’ information in the cloud, and so collaborating with our industry partners will accelerate innovation and adoption of cloud computing, while enabling successful cloud implementation. . . . It’s clear that there’s much more work to be done. The white paper indicates that there’s a need to continue to move forward in education and awareness, so that trust and security issues can be overcome.”

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