Employees no longer need to shrug their shoulders and feign ignorance when asked by their IT teams if they’ve heard of DropBox, out of fear that access to such convenient cloud applications would be blocked. The results of a survey commissioned by WinMagic show that IT teams are now not only aware of the rampant popularity of so-called file-sync-and-share solutions like DropBox—they are moving to support their use. Not too long ago cloud storage and sharing solutions were the most popular IT services that IT wouldn’t admit existed. The results of our survey show that IT no longer has its head in the sand. Ninety-one percent of IT decision makers surveyed work at companies with a policy regarding the use of cloud storage services. More importantly, almost half of respondents say their company only allows the use of a cloud storage solution that the company has implemented. Presumably, such corporate solutions encrypt data while it rests in the cloud (one can only hope). While the survey results show progress, they also raise new concerns– or in some cases spotlight old concerns that linger– regarding the use of the popular services. Perhaps most alarmingly, 35 percent of those surveyed work at companies with policies that allow personal cloud storage use. And nine percent claim not to have a policy regarding cloud storage usage at all. Collectively, this means that more than four-in-ten companies surveyed are allowing the use of services like DropBox, Google Drive and others that no doubt are storing files without encrypting them. It’s encouraging that our survey results show that IT has woken up. There is no excuse for not having a policy regarding the use of file-sync-and-share solutions, and companies need to establish clear methods for encrypting files stored off a company’s premises.
Tackling the Caesars and MGM Hacks with Secure Authentication Fallback
Early September 2023, two of the world’s largest casino hotel companies — MGM Resorts and Caesars — were struck by…