Of those surveyed from the utilities sector 61% of respondents selected GDPR as the external factor likely to have a significant impact on IT plans. This is therefore similar to the findings from the insurance and the technology sectors. Furthermore, a quarter of the respondents stated that they had experienced an increase in cyber security incidents in the last 12 months.
Despite the fact that only 25% of respondents had experienced an increase in cyber security incidents, 75% of respondents listed security as a barrier to further cloud adoption. This therefore indicates that companies in this industry are aware of the threat which cyber-crime may pose, even though they may not necessarily have experienced an increase in cyber-attacks.
In addition to security, uncontrolled variable costs and availability of data were also highlighted as important barriers to further cloud adoption. From this sector, 53% of respondents said that they were considering extending their use of the cloud, even though on average respondents were 72% satisfied they were able to achieve their objectives by moving to the cloud.