Despite efforts to improve security training, employees at large companies continue to choose comfort over security when it comes to using productivity tools for their work. About a third of employees at these large companies frequently upload and share corporate data to third-party cloud apps without employer .
A security study conducted by IBM also found that about half of millennials share corporate data through external cloud apps, which is extremely worrying considering that by 2020, this 'share' will constitute 50% of the global workforce.
These results come despite the fact that 60% of employees understand that accessing and uploading data to third-party applications violates their employers’ security and privacy policies—yet they do it anyway.
While the cloud offers greater productivity, employees engaging in shady and illegal IT activities in unsecured applications can lead to companies losing control of sensitive data, and businesses failing to protect their own employees’ identities.
The IBM Security study also revealed that a quarter of the total workforce also links these applications to their corporate connections, leaving huge gaps through which attackers can gain access to corporate networks.
Furthermore, the unsafe use of these applications essentially opens the doors of companies wide open to attackers, without the ability to monitor who comes into contact with corporate data since there is no transparency in the use of third-party applications.
