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06
magazine
www.binfo.co.uk
agenda
Dropbox the Marmite in
the Cloud
Employers’ ambivalent attitude to the cloud is
revealed in a new report on the most popular
apps being used in business by mobile device
management (MDM) specialist Zenprise.
According to the
Zenprise MDM Cloud Report
for Q2 2012, Dropbox sits at the top of both
black and whitelists, indicating that businesses
either love the file-sharing app, seeing it as a
useful business tool, or hate it and regard it as an
unacceptable security risk.
Other apps to divide opinion in this way are
Skype, Citrix, Evernote, Keynote and Facebook.
Overall, organisations have doubled their app
deployment in the last quarter and now make
more than 100 third-party apps available to their
mobile users.
The proportion of organisations restricting
device resources or apps to protect corporate
data, for example by disabling device cameras,
Bluetooth, app stores etc., has increased by 50%
in the last quarter, from 20% to 34%. In addition,
more than half of companies (54%) now require
passcodes on mobile devices in order to protect
data from unauthorised users.
www.zenprise.com/mdm-cloud-report-q2-2012
Data up for grabs
Varonis warns that sensitive corporate data
is ‘up for grabs’, as two thirds (67%) of senior
managers don’t know where their company
data resides and three quarters (74%) of
companies don’t have a process for tracking
which files have been placed on cloud-
based collaboration and storage services. Of
those that do allow use of cloud-based file
synchronisation services, only 9% have a
process for authorising and reviewing access
to cloud repositories, with another 23% still
developing such policies. The remaining 68%
either have no plans in place that they are
aware of, or live without formal processes for
granting and reviewing access.
Varonis is advising businesses to take the
following five steps to secure corporate data:
n
Create an inventory of your most used
collaboration platforms to get an overview
where data lives, who has access to it and who
is using it;
n
Identify data owners for each data set and
perform a preliminary entitlement review to
see if data is stored in the right place and if
the right people have access to it;
n
Remediate any exposures, such as data that is
accessible to too many people or regulated/
sensitive content that is stored in the wrong
place;
n
Monitor access to all data to help identity
data owners and unused data and abuse; and
n
Put in place a process that provides secure
collaboration for remote employees –
including synchronisation, mobile device
support and extranet functionality.
www.varonis.com
Personal data misused by
businesses
A YouGov survey of 2,000 consumers for
Informatica found that only one in three (35%)
adults trusts businesses to use their personal
data as directed by them and that 30% have
had their data exploited by companies in the
past, for example by passing it to a third party
without their permission. Half (46%) think that
sharing their personal data gives businesses
the opportunity to invade their privacy. The
organisations UK consumers trust most not
to share their data with a third party are the
family doctor (trusted by 61%); banks (50%);
mobile operators (20%); utility firms (19%); child
care providers (15%); estate agents (13%); and
Facebook (13%).
www.informatica.com
Regus on the road
Following similar agreements with Shell, SNCF
and NS Trains in Europe, Regus has come to an
arrangement with Extra Motorway Service Area
Group to open Regus Business Centres in service
areas at the M40 (J2 Beaconsfield), A14/M11
(Cambridge) and M25 (Cobham). The centres will
provide drivers with business lounges, meeting
rooms, printing/copying services,Wi-Fi and other
support services.
Regus already runs business centres
at French and Dutch railway stations.
Phones that
do it all
Produced to mark the
launch of the Samsung
Galaxy SIII, a new O2
report (
All About You
)
highlights the changing
role of the smartphone.
It states that, on average,
smartphone owners now
spend over 2 hours a day
using their devices, just 12 minutes of which is
spent on calls, well behind browsing the internet
(25 minutes), social networking (17 minutes),
playing games (13 minutes) and listening to
music (16 minutes). As smartphones become
more intuitive and easier to use, they are being
used to replace other possessions including alarm
clocks (cited by 54%), watches (46%), cameras
(39%), laptops (28%), games consoles (11%),
paperbacks (6%) and even TVs (6%).
Poor time-keeping
tolerated but at a price
Today’s bosses are more tolerant of
employees who are late for work, as they
trust that staff are working long before they
get to the office. So says online back-up
company Mozy, following an international
survey which shows that 73% of employers
have a more relaxed attitude to time-keeping.
Overall, bosses believe employees spend an
average of 55 minutes a day working away from
the office. In fact, the average global employee
has already clocked up 46 minutes before they
arrive at the office, with one third of British
employees checking their email by 6.30am.
The downside of a more relaxed approach
to time-keeping is that employers are now
more comfortable calling after hours, with
80% thinking it acceptable to call staff in the
evenings: 16% of UK bosses consider it OK to
call employees between 10.00pm and midnight.
The reality of work today, says Mozy, is that
the average person starts checking their work
email at 7.42am, gets into the office at 8.18am,
leaves the office at 5.48pm and stops working
fully at 7.19pm, meaning employees are in ‘work
mode’ for nearly 12 hours a day.
www.mozy.co.uk/9-5
A separate survey of UK working habits by Good
Technology found that UK workers put in three
weeks overtime a year answering calls and email
at home. They are also using their mobiles to
mix work and their personal life as never before,
with 42% using the same phone for personal and
work use.
A separate survey by SkyDox found that two
thirds (66%) of office workers use unauthorised
consumer-based file-sharing apps to share
corporate documents and more than half (55%)
do so without alerting their IT department. The
study of 4,000 employees in the US and UK
shows that while employees have embraced
free file-sharing platforms to store or share
documents, IT administrators haven’t been
able to provide viable alternatives to free,
unauthorised applications. Three quarters (77%)
of information workers use personal mobile
devices or tablets for work.
www.skydox.com