A recently released study by CloudEntr on cloud security found that the biggest risk to enterprise data stored in the cloud are the employees themselves.
According to the ‘State of SMB Cybersecurity’ report, which included surveys of more than 400 IT professionals in 20 different industries, more than three-quarters of IT workers cited staff members as the weakest link to their organization’s security infrastructure, as well as a liability in relation to cloud computing.
When asked what their biggest worry was when it came to cloud security, 75 percent of participants said it was the possibility that employees may be exposing company data without even knowing it.
Different methods for network protection
Nearly 90 percent of those surveyed said that improved cyber security education for staff would help to reduce the likelihood of data breaches, while 62 percent said stronger network perimeter security would also do the trick. Increased use of perimeter defense solutions would be especially helpful for the 15 percent of companies that have employees utilizing the cloud despite the fact that they don’t have a formal cloud policy in place. Even with the prevalence of shadow IT, 80 percent of those organizations had no strategy for monitoring and preventing unauthorized cloud use, increasing the need for advanced security services.
“One of the more interesting findings from the report is that despite the fact that an overwhelming number of IT professionals in small and mid-size business sectors feel that they are concerned about cloud security, a majority of those same decision-makers are turning to employee education, but not giving those same employees the tools they need to ensure proper secure protocols and practices,” said Tom Smith, vice president of business development and strategy at CloudEnt.
Smith added that 2014 was the ‘Year of the Hack’ and said threats targeting the enterprise will likely increase in the new year. In order to combat the influx of cyberattacks, he suggested enterprises invest in security tools that will help to increase the protection of their information and business as a whole.
Companies looking to protect their data while still realizing the benefits of the cloud should implement Faronics Deep Freeze Enterprise. The program helps to secure endpoints by freezing the desired configuration set by the IT Admin. Any unwelcome changes made by employees or malicious actors can be removed from the system with a simple reboot that brings the machine back to the settings chosen before the intrusion. User data can also be stored safely on a network drive protected by Deep Freeze and retained even after a reboot to ensure sensitive information is never lost.
