SaaS Security Highlighted in New Report
Posted by skyhighnetworks on April 16th, 2014
A recent report on SaaS Security highlighted a number of developments including that the average company in Europe is using 588 cloud services, almost as many as US companies which average 626 services. That shows that European employees are just as prolific in embracing the use of SaaS application at the office, despite their potential risks.
Other key findings, which surveyed over 1million workers in the EU and UK:
Adoption of Cloud Services in Europe is Similar to U.S.
Data from more than 1 million users in Europe suggests that the adoption of cloud services is similar to the U.S. On average, a European organisation has 588 cloud services in use, compared to 626 in the U.S.
Organisations Need to Educate Employees on Data Protection Directives and Privacy Laws
Employees are unaware of the risks of cloud services and are unknowingly putting their organisations at risk. Of the 2,105 cloud services used, only 9% provide enterprise-grade security capabilities, and 72% store data in the US. Furthermore, only 12% encrypt data at rest, 21% support multi-factor authentication, and 5% are ISO 27001 certified.
Petabytes of Data Being Stored in U.S. Data Centres
Collaboration, Content Sharing, and File Sharing are the most widely used cloud service categories. Among the Top 10 services in each category, only 5 of the 30 cloud services are headquartered in Europe. Twenty-five of the top 30 providers are based in countries (U.S., Russia, China) where the privacy laws are non-existent compared to Europe.
U.S. Does Not Have Grip On Social Media
Four of the Top 10 social media sites are headquartered outside the U.S. Of the four non-U.S. based social media sites, 2 are headquartered in Europe (Xing, Badoo), 1 in Russia (VK), and 1 in China (Weibo).
Tracking Services Present Significant Danger
Unbeknownst to IT, there are 49 different services that are tracking employees’ behaviour on the Internet. All of these services are based in the U.S. and expose organisations to watering hole attacks.
Author :
Skyhigh Networks, the Cloud Security Services company, enables companies to embrace Cloud Security Services with appropriate levels of security, compliance, and governance while lowering overall risk and cost. With customers in financial services, healthcare, high technology, media, manufacturing, and legal verticals, the company was a finalist for the RSA Conference 2013 Most Innovative Company award and was recently named a "Cool Vendor" by Gartner, Inc. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Skyhigh Networks is led by an experienced team and is venture-backed by Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital. For more information, visit us at http://www.skyhighnetworks.com/saas-security/ or follow us on Twitter@skyhighnetworks.
