Employees In the Dark on Cloud Policies

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Petra Jorgenson.

The development and evolution of cloud computing is a double-edged sword for midsize businesses. The technology enables companies to streamline processes and scale resources to meet the needs of the organization–all the while reducing or eliminating overhead–but just like with mobile computing, employees can abuse the cloud and put a business at risk.

Symantec released a study in November, "The Myth of Keeping Critical Business Information Out of Clouds," that reveals just how common abuse of cloud services is in the workplace. According to the 165 IT managers and staffers questioned, most employees use unauthorized cloud services behind the IT department’s back; around 80 percent of workers access email and communications services, file-sharing software, online storage services, and contact manager applications without permission…

It might not just be negligence causing employees to skirt formal policies. "The majority of employees do not think there is a policy to control their use of cloud applications or they have no idea–they just do whatever they want," according to the report. What’s worse, most workers are unaware of the consequences related to policy violations or assume there are no consequences at all. On the flip side, however, 81 percent of IT administrators claimed their organization had clear consequences for "going rogue."…

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