On the Challenge of Cloud-based FileSharing and Personal Devices – Lessons to be learned

A new study confirming the threads of Mobile and Cloud-based File Sharing services. The results are alarming – but do not surprise me.

Enterprise content is landing on personal laptops, tablets and smartphones and with platforms like Gmail, Dropbox, Google Drive or Amazon Web Services, it is easy to store that critical business content in the cloud and out of reach of other workers.

The amount of content involved here and the number of employees squirreling away enterprise data in private cloud accounts is extraordinary. The figures show:

• 38% of US office workers store work documents on personal cloud tools and services
• 16% use Dropbox to store work documents
• 15% use Google Drive
• 12% use Apple cloud

Apart from demonstrating how stiff competition in the cloud storage space is, it also demonstrates what cloud storage providers are really making the cut. On top of this, the way employees are accessing this data has the potential to create major security problems. …

According to the research, 91% of workers in both the US and the UK store, access share and working on enterprise documents on unapproved personal devices.

via Lack of BYOD Strategies Risks Creation of Personal Content Silos [Infographic].

Lessons to be learned as I see them:

• We need to provide more comfortable and easy to use tools and educate the people on them.
• We need to teach our employees on security threads.
• And we have to have a mobile and BYOD strategy in place. Trying to ban mobile devices simply won’t work.