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NETWORK NEWS - MOVES, ADDS AND CHANGES
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Eduserv, part of Jisc and Socitm has
researched cloud adoption across the
public sector, focusing on universities,
public bodies, local authorities and emergency
services. It found that universities lead
in cloud adoption, while emergency services
lag behind. Apparently, 36 per cent of
Universities store at least 10 per cent of their
data in the cloud, followed by public bodies
(29 per cent), local authorities (21 per cent)
and emergency services with just 13 per cent.
The research shows that IT is being
managed differently across organisation
types. The vast majority of universities
primarily manage their IT in-house (96
per cent) with only 1 per cent outsourcing
and 3 per cent using a hybrid
model. Public bodies are the organisations
that use outsourced IT the most
(20 per cent), meanwhile, emergency
services are second in outsourcing IT at
16 per cent and local authorities third
with 15 per cent.
Andy Powell, CTO at Eduserv said "The
journey starts on-premise and will almost
certainly transition into a hybrid phase,
possibly for quite some time, as many
organisations are insufficiently mature in
their IT management and information
governance." Martin Ferguson, Director
of Policy and Research at Socitm
believes that "The rate of cloud adoption
by public sector organisations reflects
the serious challenges IT leaders are
facing with austerity cuts, lack of understanding
by the leadership and a need
for culture change."
The complexity of IT is resulting in the
resurgence of 'back to basics' according
to a poll by Infosecurity Europe. When
asked what their security mantra is for
2019, more than half explained that
they plan to go back to basics while 45
per cent reveal they will invest in more
technology. According to Gartner,
worldwide spending on information
security products and services is forecast
to grow 8.7 per cent to $124 billion
in 2019.
Concerning complexity, two-thirds
believe that securing devices and personal
data will become more (rather
than less) complicated over the next 12
months. Forrester predicts that 85 per
cent of businesses will implement or
plan to implement IoT solutions in 2019
so the level of complexity will only
increase as more devices and systems
come online.
Victoria Windsor, Group Content
Manager at Infosecurity Group explained
that, "CISOs are managing increasingly
complex security architectures and looking
to streamline operations and technology
in response to a growing skills
crisis, rising costs and myriad compliance
requirements. With many of us
starting the New Year with well-intended
resolutions, it seems that security professionals
are doing the same."
Its ok, you can breathe: that is, if you
have been waiting to see who will be
served the first major GDPR fine.
Responding to a long line of issues with
Google's advertising practices it is has
been revealed that the company has
received a £44 million fine. Kevin
Curran, Professor of Cybersecurity at
Ulster University and a Senior Member
of the IEEE said, "I welcome the fine of
50 million euros levied on Google by
the French data regulator CNIL for
breaching the EU's data protection
rules. The fine is for a lack of transparency,
inadequate information and
lack of valid consent regarding ads personalisation.
"The GDPR, which iterated on the EUs
previous data protection law, aims to
safeguard EU citizens and one of the
key tenets is that user consent must be
freely given, specific, informed and
unambiguous. It also must be a positive
opt-in and consent can never be inferred
from silence or nefarious activities such
as pre-ticked boxes or inactivity."
Professor Curran also noted the significance
of such a hefty fine as a stark
warning to other big technology organisations
who may view themselves as too
big to take down. Curran concludes, "A
fair law. A welcome law." NC
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