Security, management and compliance challenges are hitting the benefits businesses are getting from using the cloud as their infrastructures become more complex, according to new research.

The study from security and compliance specialist WinMagic reveals that 39 percent of respondents report their infrastructure is more complex since using the cloud, and 53 percent spend more time on management tasks than they have done previously.

Of the 1,029 IT decision makers surveyed, 98 percent report using the cloud, with an average 50 percent of their infrastructure on cloud systems. Around a third (33 percent) of respondents report that their data is only partially encrypted in the cloud, and 39 percent admitted to not having unbroken security audit trails across virtual machines in the cloud, leaving them exposed. 58 percent say security is their top concern, followed by protecting sensitive data from unauthorized access (55 percent) and the increased complexity of infrastructure (44 percent).

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