Cloud storage service

Cloud storage service

With its convenient and fast features, cloud storage service has been widely used by Internet users. According to Xinhuanet data, as of March this year, the number of personal cloud users in China has exceeded 0.351 billion. However, is it safe and reliable to upload files to the cloud, whether individual or enterprise users?

Recently, experts from Kaspersky Lab have studied this issue in depth. The results show that, if effective defense measures are not adopted, cloud storage may be "dark clouds", posing a huge security risk. The reason is that most popular cloud storage's automatic synchronization function. According to analysis by Kaspersky Lab experts, cyber criminals are likely to gain control of their laptops through Dropbox client applications installed on employee laptops. When this incident occurs, the employee may not be in the office. Once an infected file is stored in a cloud folder, Dropbox automatically copies the infected file to all devices connected to the enterprise network. The Enterprise Network also performs the same service. Currently, almost all popular cloud storage applications have automatic synchronization functions, including Onedrive (Skydrive), Google Drive, and Yandex Disk.

In addition, Kaspersky Lab experts also found that about three malware in the home computer cloud folder were implanted through the synchronization mechanism. For enterprise users, this data is as high as 50%. It is worth noting that there is a difference between enterprise users and home users: the Microsoft Office files in the cloud folder in the former are mostly infected, while in the latter's computer, usually, infected Microsoft Office files coexist with malicious Android apps.

Kirill Kruglov, Senior Research developer at Kaspersky Lab, said: "We have found that enterprise networks are currently at a relatively low risk of being infected with cloud storage. Within a year, only 1‰ of enterprise users were infected with computers. However, in some cases, an infected computer can cause large-scale network infections and major losses. Disabling these services through firewall settings is a very troublesome process, and it needs to constantly update firewall settings ."

What should enterprises do if they encounter the above problems? According to experts from Kaspersky Lab, in this case, the system administrator needs to install a fully functional Security Toolkit on All workstations on the network, which provides heuristic and behavior anti-virus protection and permission control (HIPS) operating System Control (system monitoring or Hypervisor) and anti-vulnerability exploitation. It is reported that Kaspersky Lab's products for enterprise users not only contain the above features, but also have original application control technology. This technology can prevent the running of all software disabled by the system administrator, and protect the enterprise network from targeted attacks through Dropbox without affecting the normal operation of users.