84 per cent of employees are putting company data at risk as they secretly access consumer cloud solutions such as DropBox and SkyDrive in the workplace, says Computacenter research, Europe’s leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services. With no visibility of files available to IT managers, employees are opening networks up to potential security threats.
The research, conducted amongst 150 IT decision makers highlights that employees are being forced to turn to consumer cloud products to share files as current business systems simply cannot offer the same level of service.
“Stealth cloud is a major issue for organisations,” says Paul Casey, Cloud Practice Leader Computacenter. “These cloud products are very convenient, easy to access, simple to use and perfect for remote working. Unfortunately, most IT departments don’t offer similar file sharing tools which are secure and as a result are losing the battle to keep company data on the office network.
“The second an employee stores files and data using a solution such as DropBox, IT managers lose all visibility of what is going on and potentially confidential information and intellectual property is open to security threats and breaches.”
These threats are understandably keeping IT managers awake at night with 56 per cent worried about possible security breaches and a further half wishing they had full visibility of what data is stored within the cloud.
Casey concludes: “It is imperative that businesses address this problem now. It is clear that everyone knows the risks of consumer cloud products, but until the correct solutions are put in place or alternative sanctioned solutions, employees will continue to turn to consumer clouds to get the job done – no matter what the consequence might be.”
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Tags: Private Cloud, Public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, Cloud Security, Service Providers, Software-as-a-Service |
