Concerns about data security, privacy, residency and compliance in the cloud continue to hinder adoption of the outsourcing option, a new poll showed.

The responses were from 50 information technology professionals experienced in cloud computing and the poll was taken by CipherCloud of San Jose, Calif., at the Dreamforce event in San Francisco last month.

Two-thirds of the respondents said that at least one cloud project had been stopped or delayed at their shop because of those factors, with data leakage accounting for 52% of those instances, the company said.

“Stalled or canceled projects are costing companies millions. Many organizations are clearly deploying SaaS or cloud applications first and assessing the risk later,” said Pravin Kothari, founder and CEO at CipherCloud, a provider of cloud encryption gateways.

Storing sensitive data in the cloud was indicated as a concern for these specific areas:

• Data security – 66%
• Data privacy – 56%
• Compliance – 34%
• Data residency – 26%

CipherCloud said the study also showed a high percentage of respondents were also concerned with other specific cloud threats:

• Data leakage – 52%
• Unknown risk profiles – 34%
• Account, service and traffic hijacking – 32%
• Shared technology vulnerabilities – 32%
• Malicious insiders at cloud providers – 28%
• Insecure programming interfaces – 24%