For 60 percent of small- and mid-size business respondents in a recent Microsoft study, a key concern was data security, with 45 percent about loss of control over their data. Forty-two percent also doubted the cloud’s reliability.
However, for SMBs that are actually using cloud services, the study found a different picture.
Adrienne Hall, general manager of Trustworthy Computing at Microsoft, said in a statement that “there’s a big gap between perception and reality when it comes to the cloud.” She said SMBs that have adopted cloud services have “found security, privacy and reliability advantages” that were unexpected. Ninety-four percent now have security benefits they didn’t have with on-premises technology, including up-to-date systems, up-to-date antivirus and spam e-mail management . Sixty-two percent experienced increased levels of privacy protection, while 75 percent noted improved service availability.
The study also highlihts cost savings from cloud services, with 70 percent of respondents saying they were “pursuing new opportunities” because of the time saved through cloud-based security management.
However, The study does not explicitly distinguish between public, private or hybrid clouds. For some SMBs, cloud services also could pose an issue for regulatory compliance. On-premise, behind-the-firewall private clouds are considered more secure than public ones, but those require a robust IT department to keep everything up to date.
Businesses that offer employees, partners and customers access to Windows Azure Active Directory (AD) managed apps can now add another layer of security to data that’s stored on Microsoft’s cloud.
Microsoft announced Active Authentication, a new multifactor authentication offering based on the company’s PhoneFactor acquisition
Microsoft is offering two pricing models.
– per-user, per-month plans
– or a per-authentication option that is based on the total number of authentications that are performed each month.
Before Active Authentication is officially made generally available, the company is offering the service at the discounted price $1.00 per user per month or $1.00 for every 10 authentications.
( In May, Twitter rolled out two-factor authentication to improve security follwoing high-profile breaches that compromised the accounts of media organizations, including the Financial Times and BBC, (and Twitter itself). Google offered two-factor authentication for Google Apps way back in 2010).