Many medium and large enterprises remain concerned about cloud security, according to a new survey of 300 enterprises conducted by Clutch.

The business-to-business (B2B) reviews provider found 22 percent of enterprises ranked security first among cloud computing benefits.

However, Clutch pointed out that 31 percent of respondents also identified security as their most prevalent challenge.

Other survey results included:

“Distrust of the cloud derives from a lack of knowledge about the safeguards that exist to secure data and the circumstances that lead to data breaches. In reality, security problems often arise from human error, rather than shortcomings in cloud infrastructure,” Clutch wrote in its report. 

A recent Thales e-Security study of more than 5,000 IT professionals also indicated the majority of organizations plan to transfer sensitive data to the cloud within the next few years.

In addition, this study indicated the use of encryption continues to grow in response to cyber attacks, privacy compliance regulations and consumer concerns.

“As businesses increasingly turn to cloud services, we’re seeing a rapid rise in sensitive or confidential data being transferred to the cloud and yet only a third of respondents had an overall, consistently applied encryption strategy,” Peter Galvin, Thales’ vice president of strategy, said in a prepared statement. 

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