Banks and financial firms, usually at the cutting edge of new technologies, have been slower than most other sectors to outsource their IT to the public internet – also known as the "cloud". But there are now good reasons why that should change.

Figures from Skyhigh, a cloud services provider, show that financial firms uploaded on average around 7 terabytes of data a month to the cloud in 2016. That was well behind healthcare companies, who used t——he cloud for 14 terabytes a month, and manufacturing firms, who uploaded 24.5 terabytes.