Cloud file storage and sharing has long been popular for personal use with services such as Dropbox becoming established favourites for sharing information with friends and family and for synchronisation across devices such as PCs, phones and tablets. More recently however these services are becoming more popular amongst business users, driven by the proliferation of new devices used in the corporate environment and the convenience of their easy to use interfaces.
This does however present a challenge for many organisations as it introduces yet another system which is potentially outside the controls of the traditional IT environment. Furthermore a number of these services, which were built primarily for consumer use, may not have the necessary controls in place for business use, particularly in regulated industries. In fact Dropbox itself has a well-publicised history of security breaches.
We find a number of businesses are guilty of signing up for such services without carrying out the necessary due diligence. Reading the terms and conditions is essential, especially if you are storing client data or intellectual property on the services. Without doing so you may find yourself in breach of the data protection act or industry specific regulation. It should also be said that any service being offered for free is unlikely to be suitable for business.
The demand for convenient file sharing is only likely to grow so the best policy for businesses is to securely implement a recognised corporate grade system to ensure they remain in control of their data. Fortunately there are a number of such solutions on the market – call us on 0330 124 3599 to find out more.
