Workers use consumer cloud services despite knowing the protection risks

The use of consumer cloud services is dominant inside the workplace despite two-thirds recognising potential security issues.

A survey conducted by Sophos of 214 visitors to its Infosecurity Europe stand found that 45 per cent use consumer cloud services similar to Dropbox for work purposes, while 64 per cent thought that such services present potential security issues â€" demonstrating that, while people understand the protection risks these services can present, there's a general failure by businesses to govern their use.

Chris Pace, product specialist at Sophos, said: “Businesses ought to recognise the large demand there's for cloud services which includes Dropbox and take a proactive method to incorporating these in security policies.

“What businesses ought to remember, however, is this additional way of coping with information inherently poses additional security vulnerabilities that should be addressed before valuable data is compromised.”

Speaking on the event, Julian Jeffery, head of policy and company reporting at Telefonica, said security teams should find methods to allow consumer cloud storage into the company network; he said security couldn't remain the ‘no guys' with such services, but had to be open with employees and are available to a compromise.

In the survey, 49 per cent of respondents said wireless networks of their place of business were protected, but only by a single or small variety of passwords.

“Everyone desires to use WiFi because it's flexible and straightforward, but wireless solutions are inherently complex. Instead of companies putting in a normal wireless router that connects to the web with everyone using an analogous or a limited choice of keys, they need to be in search of the way to integrate WiFi into their existing network security, giving them both better value and control,” Pace said.