Dive Brief:

• Cloud is now viewed by many enterprises as the safest choice for protecting data, according to Diane Greene, senior vice president of Google Enterprise.

• While many industries initially shied away from storing data in the cloud, it appears its reputation has changed and now business leaders are looking toward the cloud to keep data safe, according to a Fortune report. The banking industry, for example, is now more frequently moving to adopt the cloud. 

• Speaking at Wired’s 2016 Business Conference on Thursday, Greene said Google has 600 engineers focusing on cloud security full-time. 

Dive Insight:

Greene pointed to the fact that financial services—normally among of the most conservative and security-conscious industries—are growing more and more accepting of cloud. 

Greene said the cloud's growth has also convinced reluctant enterprises that the industry is legitimate. An April report from International Data Corporation predicted public cloud growth of approximately 14% to $24.4 billion in 2016.

"Amazon started talking about their revenues, and people went 'Whoa, this is a big business,'" said Greene. And, with large scale of security teams focused on cloud, "people realize big public clouds are the most secure place to be."

Google, which was criticized in the past for not taking cloud seriously enough, began a major push on cloud last quarter in hopes of catching Amazon Web Services. In 2015, Google had just 4% of the cloud market share, according to Synergy Research. The company fell behind AWS, Microsoft Azure and IBM, which each had 31%, 9% and 7% of the market, respectively.