• Information

    Digital economy and society in the EU is a digital publication released by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.

    For further information see:

    The dedicated section on digital economy and society on the Eurostat website.

    Articles on the digital economy and society in Statistics Explained.

    Information on data

    Date of data extraction/update: 01 June 2017 for text and all data visualisations.

    ICT usage data are organised in Eurostat's online database according to the year in which the survey was conducted.
    For households/people, most countries collected data in the 2nd quarter of the survey year. In general, data refer to the 1st quarter of the survey year. Data on e-commerce and internet security refer to the 12 months prior to the survey.
    For businesses, most data refer to the situation during the survey period. Data on ICT specialists, ICT functions and e-commerce refer to the year preceding the survey year.
    In the visualisations, data marked as 'not available' can be missing, unreliable or confidential. For more information, please see the source dataset available below each visualisation.

    Contact

    If you have questions on the data, please contact the Eurostat User Support.


    Identifiers of the digital publication:

    Catalogue number: KS-01-17-543-EN-Q
    ISBN 978-92-79-69326-7
    Doi: 10.2785/247196

    [Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission is responsible for the use that might be made of the following information.]
    Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017

    © European Union, 2017
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3. INTERNET SECURITY & the CLOUD

3.1 Safe surfing: A brief look on internet security

Most internet users in the EU have not encountered any security related problem when being online. Among these internet users, 7 out of 10 have provided some kind of personal information over the internet. However, they also undertake a variety of different actions to control access to their personal information stored online.

Among EU businesses which use a computer, 32 % had a formally defined ICT security policy to safeguard data and infrastructure. Among those, the risk of destruction or corruption of data was the risk most commonly addressed.

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3.2 Use of cloud services

Cloud computing allows internet users to store information or use software on a server run over the internet. The stored information can then be accessed on any device from any location as long as internet access is available.

In the EU in 2016, one third of internet users used cloud services; the most frequent users were younger people aged 16 to 24 years.

Among EU businesses with internet access, 22 % purchased cloud computing services in 2016. This share was considerably higher for large businesses than for SMEs. The main purposes for buying these services were hosting e-mail systems and storing files electronically.

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