CLOUD COMPUTING & SMEs IN UK- A REPORT FROM THE CLOUD STEWARDSHIP ECONOMIC GROUP PROJECT

Iffatt Gheyas and Bruce Hallas, the authors of this report states their findings on a survey carried out in  SMEs in the UK exploring fresh insights about the adoption and use of cloud computing. These SMEs of which only 93 responded to the survey were categorized based on their  annual turnover rate, years of operation, staff strength, number of their operating locations within the UK and without.

Key findings from this research include the following:

• SMEs with a relatively low annual turnover of under £100k are relying more heavily on IT & cloud computing to sustain and grow than any other organizations.
• Priority areas for IT investment (a key strategic resource) are Operations, Marketing and Sales.
• All respondents hold access or process personal and commercially sensitive information about their clients or clients‘customers.
• In most SMEs, Director/ Chief Executive/Business Owner is responsible for information security and for identifying threats. It means that SMEs are fully aware of the importance of cyber security and understand the concerns of various governments and customers about security.
• Our brief survey suggests that, in spite of their awareness of the prevalence of information security risks and its impact on the business, most of them are not following the IT security best practices.
• Almost half of the small local businesses with annual turnover less than £100k do not have an information security policy.
•  A significant majority of the SMEs surveyed do not have a business continuity policy plan and have never assessed the impact of a breach of confidentiality and/or availability would have on their businesses cash flow, profitability and reputation.
• Most SMEs choose price over security.
• The majority of SMEs see Data Retention Policy‘ and Terms & Conditions of Supply‘ as the most important criteria for the BPO vendor selection process.
• An overwhelming majority of respondents, regardless of class characteristics, view ―Legal system which governs SME‘s relationship with their supplier‖ as the most critical success factor for IT outsourcing.
• Companies with higher earnings prefer single vendor solutions, while companies with lower earnings prefer multi-vendor outsourcing.

MY REFLECTION

From this report it is obvious that SMEs with relatively low annual turnover are using cloud computing more intensively than SMEs with a higher level of turnover which negates the postulation of Kelly L, (2014) that “SMEs face the same information security threat as larger enterprises but without their budgets”. Many authors are of the opinion that financial Incapacitation is the main reason why SMEs do not invest in Information Security which may be right. Nevertheless, this report based on a valid survey shows that SMEs are aware of Information Security and beyond lack of finances they just decide not to invest in it because they feel it is not cost-effective.

 

REFERENCES:

Gheyas, I. and Hallas, B. (2011). Cloud computing and SMEs in UK. Retrieved on 05 March 2014, from< https://www.iisp.org/imis15/CMDownload.aspx?ContentKey=c0d6c3b7-81db-4c64-b9ec-a5e028aea4fd&ContentItemKey=f5a4ded3-937e-4f60-8933-cf1ed948640b>.

Kelly, L. (2014). ComputerWeekly.com. The Top 5 SME Security Challenges. Retrieved 05 March, 2014 from < http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/The-top-five-SME-security-challenges>