Posts Tagged ‘Box’

Are Consumer-based Apps Multiplying Within your Organization?

Thursday, March 14th, 2013

Dropbox, Box, YouSendIt, Google Drive, Evernote, Skype, Google Hangouts. These are just some of the apps that Delyn Simon – a 42-year old executive – rattled off to Quentin Hardy at The New York Times when asked what services she uses on her iPhone.

Forget the malicious cybercriminals, for most IT Administrators, it’s your own employees who are cause for the greatest concern. Downloading dozens of apps aimed to make daily work tasks more automated and convenient has become so commonplace that individuals often don’t think twice about hitting “install” on their smartphones and then using those unapproved apps to access and share company information.

And, the number of different apps within just one organization can be quite startling. In Hardy’s recent article, “Where Apps Meet Work, Secret Data is at Risk”, he shares that the streaming video service, Netflix, discovered employees using 496 different smartphone apps, primarily for data storage, sharing, and collaboration. And, Cisco Systems found several hundred apps touching its own network via employees’ usage.

The risks of accessing these apps for both personal and business interactions become very real when sensitive data is compromised. That’s exactly what happened last week when Evernote, an online note-taking service, experienced a breach, with customer names, emails and encrypted passwords possibly stolen, driving the company to reset passwords for 50 million users.

So, is there any way for organizations to prevent employees from using their own consumer mobile apps? Yes! But, first you must eliminate the need for employees to turn to outside data storage, sharing, and collaboration apps in the first place. That means providing a mandatory alternative – a solution that allows users to easily send, share, and access files and that allows you, the IT administrator, to know what’s being shared, where data is stored, and that corporate data is safe.

Empowering employees with a secure mobile application is the first step to keeping your corporate data safe in today’s mobile world.   And it just so happens Accellion can help you with that.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Accellion, BYOD, Data Security | No Comments »

Cloud Security and Storage Snafus Cause Alarm

Wednesday, August 1st, 2012

Service outages, application access errors, and security hiccups – that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen in recent months with cloud storage providers Dropbox, YouSendIt, and Box. All were reported to have experienced unexpected issues:

Perhaps Eric Chiu, founder of HyTrust, Inc., a virtualized infrastructure security and management vendor said it best to TechTarget, calling Dropbox “the poster child” for an application that’s infiltrated the enterprise with huge security implications.

Osterman Research, in a recent research report “The Need for Enterprise-Grade File Sharing and Synchronization” found that 49% of organizations believe the problems created by these tools are about as serious as they were 12 months ago, but 42% reported they are more serious.

Before putting your data on the line and exposing it to a potential security glitch or exposing your users to unnecessary usage issues, you must weigh the risks and benefits of a particular provider. And, don’t overlook the hefty regulatory implications if a security snafu hinders your compliance with HIPAA, SOX, and other data privacy mandates.

Many organizations are turning to enterprise-class solutions such as Accellion. While we offer the flexibility of public, private, and hybrid cloud deployments, 80 percent of our enterprise customers go the private cloud route – benefitting from around-the-clock availability, security, and confidentiality of company information.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Cloud, Data Breach, Data Security | 3 Comments »