Business Cloud News - Cloud Computing industry analysis and insight

Retailers still rank security as greatest challenge

10th January 2012

Internet security will continue to provide the biggest challenge to online retailers in 2012, according to a new survey conducted by UK-based IT and web hosting company, Iconnyx. Despite the recently reported level of uptake, only 7% of the survey’s respondents stated cloud computing to be an issue they expected to confront this year.

The survey, conducted alongside 60 retailers throughout the UK, found that almost 50% of respondents saw security as their biggest challenge.

Other technology challenges for retailers were, by percentage:

Security (47%)
Data storage (20%)
Mobile (17%)
E-commerce (10%)
Cloud Computing (7%)

The retail communications survey also underlined retailer security concerns, with 57% of respondents ranking PCI compliance, the standards framework for card payment processes online, as the most important business issue.

Other major business issues were listed as answering customer calls, synchronisation between Point of Sale and card payment machines and reducing the overall cost of connectivity to stores.

However, it is the low percentage of respondents who view cloud computing as an issue that is likely to cause the most surprise among those analysing the results.

Cloud has long been billed as providing most value to those in the online retail trade, especially given the success of recent software as a service (SaaS) e-commerce options from global IT giants such as Salesforce.com.

Yet, this latest survey appears to highlight very little interest in the new technology, from some of the UK’s top online sellers.

“It’s surprising to see that cloud is low on the list of retailer concerns, given that security and PCI compliance is top of the list,” said Tim Walker, Iconnyx’s Managing Director.

“This signals that for retailers, cloud-based technologies are neither seen as a solution or an issue. In either instance, use of the cloud can resolve security concerns and could be explored as a reliable means of addressing retailers’ issues,” he added.

With cloud computing uptake and SaaS offerings in particular, expected to increase in the UK in 2012, it could be interesting to analyse just how accurate the survey results prove to be over the coming months, and which major retailer is first to announce a major security breach in the new year.

For further details of the survey click here

Tags: cloud security | software as a service