According to the Skyhigh Networks Q4 2014 Cloud Adoption and Risk (CAR) Report companies are using more cloud services but tend to ignore the dangers of the cloud, putting potentially sensitive data at risk.
The report states the average company uses 897 cloud services in Q4 2014, up from 626 in Q4 201, with development services (GitHub, SourceForce) seeing most growth at 97%. Collaboration (Microsoft Office 365, Gmail) follow with 53% growth, even if already having a high number of services in use.
On the other hand the average employee uses 27 different cloud services, including 6 collaboration services, 4 social networks, 4 content sharing services and 3 file sharing services.
Are such services safe to use? According to Skyhigh 1082 services (11% of the overall number) encrypt data in Q4 2014, an improvement over 470 in Q4 2013, 1459 (17%) offer multi-factor authentication and 533 hold ISO 27001 certification. But then again over 89% of cloud services lack the basic security capabilities enterprises should demand.
File sharing services pose a risk, for instance. The average company uses 45-- meaning most companies cannot keep track of who is sharing what. So much so, Skyhigh says 37% of employees upload sensitive data to such such services, and 22% of files uploaded to file sharing services carry sensitive data.
Meanwhile 11% of documents-- 9% of which contain sensitive data-- end up shared with external business partners. Also concerning is 18% of external collaboration requests going to 3rd party email addresses of the Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail variety.
Following such numbers no wonder the vast majority of companies ends up with stolen credentials, with 12% of users in the average company being affected. Real Estate, High Tech and Utilities are the most exposed industry, while Government and Healthcare are the safest. Skyhigh adds 31% of passwords are reused across websites and application, bringing about a significant risk in stolen login credentials.
