By Sam Narisi, DocuCrunch (January 25, 2010)

Despite all the marketing hoopla, a new survey says businesses aren’t lining up to ink deals with cloud storage vendors. Their main concern: data security.

Vendors have pushed cloud storage as a solution to help IT departments in a tight economy — storage needs are growing by about 30% to 40% a year, according to most estimates, while budgets are staying flat.

But just 3% of companies have implemented cloud storage, according to a recent survey by Forrester. And most companies have no plans to start.

Forrester polled 1,272 IT decision makers at small- to mid-sized businesses. When asked about their plans for cloud computing:

• 43% said they aren’t interested in cloud storage
• another 43% said they’re interested, but have no plans to adopt
• 3% plan to adopt cloud storage this year
• 5% plan to do so a year from now or later
• 3% have already implemented cloud storage, and
• 1% are expanding an existing implementation.

The biggest reason for the reluctance: security and privacy concerns, according to 51% of IT execs. Businesses don’t want important data on another company’s servers. There are also worries that information will be lost. In 2008 and 2009, two online storage providers, The Linkup and Carbonite,  made the news when they lost data and couldn’t recover it for some customers.

Does this mean businesses will continue to shy away from cloud computing? Not necessarily, say most experts, as cloud vendors are getting better and IT’s needs are increasing.

To ensure security when putting data in the cloud, Gartner recommends businesses:

1. Evaluate the vendor’s security practices
2. Make sure your contract demands regular security checks and immediate notification of any security issues
3. Find out how the vendor protects against insider theft (for example, review employee background check policies), and
4. Know what other businesses use the same vendor — they may bring added risk to the network.