A worrying report from polling company Ipsos MORI suggests that 91% of US office workers store documents on personal devices – and 38% of those questioned use consumer Cloud services to store and transfer company data.
This open approach to company data access may help make staff more productive, but it also leaves sensitive information more vulnerable to misuse or theft. Businesses should be encouraged that staff are being resourceful, but they should be equally concerned about the risks involved.
Although these statistics come from America, there is little reason to believe that the situation is not the same here in the UK. Staff regularly use personal USB devices to transfer files between computers, but do they remember to delete that data before leaving the office? If the drive is later lost or stolen, the contents could easily fall into the wrong hands.
Rather than completely ban the use of personal devices and public Cloud services, however, companies should instead look at the potential for business-oriented solutions that offer similar functionality, but with improved security. LiveDrive from Broadband Cloud Solutions offers Cloud-based file storage and retrieval services, backed by encrypted file storage and accessible from any device, so that staff no longer have any reason to take their own copies. All data remains stored securely in one place where it cannot be lost or stolen.
To find out more about LiveDrive, how it can be used to protect your data and facilitate new ways of working, give the Broadband Cloud Solutions team a call today on 0141 585 6363.
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