It’s a common situation occurring in many companies right now: Finance is ready to implement cloud computing services, while IT is pumping the breaks because of concerns about data security. A recent study shows how it pays off to listen to the tech experts. 

That’s the message in a recent SailPoint survey of 200 business leaders and 200 IT decision makers.

Companies are turning to cloud computing services, even for critical and sensitive applications that previously had been kept in-house due to security and reliability concerns. Right now, one-in-three mission critical apps are in the cloud, and that will increase to one-in-two by 2015, according to SailPoint.

How’d that happen given the concerns of most IT departments? Answer: Cloud computing services are being adopted without IT’s involvement.

According to the survey, only 34% of business leaders brought IT into the decision-making process when choosing a cloud service, and only 29% got IT’s help while the service was being deployed.

That’s despite the fact that most business leaders (70%) say keeping data secure in the cloud is IT’s responsibility, and nearly all IT pros (95%) have serious concerns about cloud computing security.

Failing to get IT decision makers involved in cloud deployments so they can address those concerns could come back to haunt companies: Another survey from antivirus vendor Symantec found that among business that had deployed cloud computing services without IT’s help, 40% have experienced a data breach, and 25% have face account takeover issues, website tampering, or stolen goods or services.

Part of that is likely due to the fact that nearly half of business leaders aren’t up to speed when it comes to protecting user access privileges and other key factors necessary for cloud security, according to SailPoint’s survey.

Bottom line: If IT, Finance and business units don’t properly communicate while cloud computing services are selected and deployed, the company could be at risk of costly security problems.

Here’s an inforgraphic detailing the results of SailPoint’s survey:

Tags: cloud security, Communication, data breaches, policies