One of the biggest ongoing debates in the HIT world is how best to protect digitized health information.

And based on the findings of a new survey, it seems safe to say that even as technology advances, those debates are going to continue.

The survey comes from the Ponemon Institute, and in looking at the issue of data security as more people take to cloud computing, it finds just a small disagreement between cloud computing vendors and their prospective clients.

As this article puts it, “cloud computing vendors and users each say the other group has the primary responsibility for taking charge of data security in the cloud.”

Specifically, “69% of cloud providers think that cloud users are most responsible for security, and only 16% think it's a shared responsibility.”

According to the survey, however, “33% of users see cloud security as a shared responsibility, and 32% think that the provider alone is most responsible. Only 35% of cloud users, meanwhile, think that users should be most responsible for cloud security.”

Needless to say, there are potentially significant consequences to the disagreement, for if each side thinks the other is responsible for watching the data hen house, the chances are that the data wolves are going to find breaking in that much easier.

Interestingly, however, the study suggests that part of the reason for this divide may stem from a case of bad communication. It points out that “cloud providers make a minimal effort because they don't think that their data security practices will win them customers. Indeed, only 20% of providers think that customers evaluate data security before selecting a vendor.”

So whose fault is it, then, if vendors don’t take security as seriously as users would like?

In the end, of course, this is another issue that, one way or another, is going to end up at least partially in the laps of policymakers. After all, this isn’t the last time HIT is going to advance. So even as they struggle to get security right for current systems, policymakers need to be glancing on a regular basis at the security issues just around the corner.

Jeff Rowe blogs regularly at HITECHWatch.com.