Today WinMagic Inc. revealed the results of a survey, conducted by CensusWide, showing that several UK companies are potentially vulnerable to cyber attacks and data breaches due to employee use of cloud storage. The survey was of 1,000 offices with at least 50 employees. The survey found widespread employee use of cloud storage services that were at times either not sanctioned by employers or the employee had no knowledge of their companies policy of the use of cloud storage services.
Today WinMagic Inc. revealed the results of a survey, conducted by CensusWide, showing that several UK companies are potentially vulnerable to cyber attacks and data breaches due to employee use of cloud storage. The survey was of 1,000 offices with at least 50 employees. The survey found widespread employee use of cloud storage services that were at times either not sanctioned by employers or the employee had no knowledge of their companies policy of the use of cloud storage services.
The survey found that while nearly 41% of employees use a cloud storage service for accessing work files, only 35% use a service sanctioned by their employer. Perhaps more startling is the fact that only 57% of employees actually knew their company’s policy in regards to using cloud storage services for work related files. The survey also found that while that 47% of UK employees use work equipment at home, for those that use cloud storage services the number is much higher. 70% of employees that use cloud storage services use work equipment at home.
The main takeaway here is the disparity between IT policies regarding the use of cloud storage and employees habits. Businesses can adopt better policies, make training more thorough, and/or encrypt data before employees upload it into cloud storage services. IT needs visibility into where company data is and employees need access at all times to keep productivity up. Educating employees would be a good first step and encryption will help keep corporate data safe in the event of a failure on the cloud vendor side.
Key findings:
- 65% of employees don’t have or don’t know the company policy on cloud storage
- 1 in 10 employees who use cloud storage services at least once a week have no confidence in the security of their data saved and accessed from the cloud
- Cloud storage use varies widely – 41% use cloud services at least once a week, whilst 42% never use these services at all
- 1 in 20 employees who use cloud services at least once a week, do so despite these services being restricted by their company
- 50% of respondents use personal equipment to access work information and services at least once a week
- 47% of employees use company-issued equipment at home at least once a week
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