Enterprises are increasingly turning to SD-WAN to secure their public cloud deployments, according to a new report commissioned by Barracuda Networks.

Security remains top of mind for enterprises as they begin their cloud migration and, of those surveyed, 74% reported their business had deployed or are planning to deploy SD-WAN to do just that, according to market research Vanson Bourne. The firm surveyed 750 people from enterprises of all sizes in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, Africa (EMEA), and the Asia Pacific markets (APAC).

As enterprises move resources to the cloud, they face two challenges: a lack of access control and the prospect of backhauling traffic, the report concluded.

"When data and applications reside in the data center, a firewall is typically used to set strict policy on who can access which information," the report's authors wrote. "Survey respondents are concerned about losing that control when moving to public cloud. SD-WAN provides the proper solution to enforce policy and maintain that control."

While SD-WAN adoption is on the rise, it is growing faster in some markets or verticals than others with the U.S. leading the pack, and EMEA and APAC not far behind.

SD-WAN adoption is strongest in the financial services market, with 35% of respondents having already deployed the technology.

Conversely, the public sector has been the slowest to adopt SD-WAN, the report found. Just 7% of respondents working in the public sector have deployed SD-WAN, while 36% were in the process of doing so or plan to do so within the next year.

The survey also found that 63% of the energy market, which has been the second slowest industry to adopt SD-WAN, was in the process of rolling it out.

Very few respondents reported no plans for SD-WAN.

Of those in the process of implementing SD-WAN, the majority (52%) of respondents would prefer to purchase the service through a public cloud provider.

By comparison, just 16% expressed a preference to buy from an independent vendor, 15% from a telecommunications partner, 12% from a value-added reseller, and 6% reported no preference.

When it comes to cloud workflows, respondents reported a strong (45%) preference for Microsoft Azure. Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the preferred provider for 30% of respondents, while 20% counted Google Cloud Platform (GCP) as their cloud provider of choice.

Respondents perceived Azure as more secure and more user friendly compared to AWS or GCP, according to the report.

"Since security is the biggest blocker for moving to public cloud, it makes sense that Azure would be so strongly preferred," the report's authors concluded.