UK Employees Gamble With Company Data

UK firms are losing the battle to protect and safeguard data against the risks posed by the public cloud, according to a survey by Connected Data, Inc.

While the public cloud enables employees to sync and share files via a user-friendly interface, it is vulnerable to a number of major security and regulation threats, including hacking. This is a problem for companies with sensitive data that need to ensure a high level of privacy.

According to the survey, businesses and employees are aware of the risks, but staff gamble with data every day in order to speed up processes.

The survey revealed:

• 90% of IT decision makers believe sharing sensitive data in the public cloud poses some level of risk
• Only 33% have banned staff from using the public cloud
• 58% of IT decision makes admit they wouldn’t know whether their employees were using it anyway
• Only 36% of businesses provide training on file and data sharing
• 48% of companies that believe the public cloud is a risk have not added guidelines to a staff manual
  

Geoff Barrall, CEO, Connected Data, commented: “The risks of the public cloud are common knowledge, but what is surprising is that companies are still allowing employees to gamble with their data. We should be concerned by a growing pattern of employee behavior that puts sensitive company data at risk. Penalties to staff are serious, yet the need to share files across different devices is leading them to break company policy and put their jobs on the line. The survey highlights how important it is to address this dilemma before more company data is lost or exposed.“

A survey of 100 IT decision makers was commissioned by Connected Data and carried out by independent research company, Verve Partners Limited.