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American consumers have major concerns with the security of cloud services, according to two new Google Consumer surveys IPVM has run.

In this note, we examine consumer responses of home networks vs the cloud and the risks involved.

Head to Head

Consumers overwhelmingly choose their home computers as being more secure than the cloud for their personal data, as shown in this chart:

See the full results here.

Many Unsure



When adding a third option for 'don't know / not sure', this becomes the top choice selected. However, for those picking one of the two, home computer still beats the cloud by a similar overwhelmingly margin:

See the full results here.

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Risks - Home vs Cloud

Consumer perception aside, there is clearly quite a debate about which side is 'more' secure. On the one hand, most consumers are not knowledgeable at protecting their own home data and increasingly need to use the cloud anyway, where providers are typically far more sophisticated. On the other hand, individual isolated home devices are a less tempting and organized target than cloud service providers, reinforced by the regular hacking of public companies and governments.

Video Surveillance Impact

Many services almost have to be run in the cloud. For example, extremely few consumers are going to do their own email servers and their bank accounts are inherently secured / managed outside their house.

However, it is the norm to run one's video surveillance in one's house or business and there are numerous options, at big box stores and online retailers where one can cheaply get a home / local video surveillance complete system.

This adds to a series of IPVM surveys investigating the public's confidence in recording video in the cloud (see: Home Security Camera Statistics 2016, Most Americans Not OK With Home Security Video Recorded In the Cloud, Americans Reject Chinese and US Government Cloud Video Recording).

Outlook

Ultimately, we suspect the benefits of having cloud access and storage will outweigh consumer's concerns about security but this appears to be an important objection for the immediate future.