BYOD Exposure to consumer cloud storage risks

Earlier this month, when a hacker claimed that he had easily invaded the Dropbox storage and mailboxes of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, the risk of using consumer cloud storage systems was becoming increasingly apparent. The fact that Mr. Romney's account was hacked has clearly affected IBM's BYOD strategy, which prohibits the use of Dropbox because of the fear that hackers will easily access sensitive information stored in them. These examples illustrate the risk of putting enterprise data on consumer-facing cloud storage systems, said it executives and analysts. "IBM has developed the world's largest BYOD plan, but the plan blocked Evernote and Dropbox because they found that the company's future product plans and all the truly sensitive data are being leaked into these cloud services." "said Dion Hinchcliffe, executive vice president of Dachis Group, it consulting firm. Although companies have become more restrictive in their BYOD policies, most companies have not addressed the data disclosure problems associated with using consumer applications and services, such as cloud storage services on mobile devices. "Cloud data centers are becoming a high-value target for data thieves," Hinchcliffe said, as the likelihood of data leaks is rising as "insiders who hold the keys to the company's castles" may be taking bribes to leak data to hackers. "There is a lot of temptation now," he added. Dave Malcolm, chief security officer at the Hyatt Hotel, said he had been acutely aware that employees were using mobile devices to use consumer-level cloud storage services in their offices, and he had to take steps to confront the situation. The hotel chain, for example, is investigating staff workstations to determine if any cloud storage applications like Dropbox are being downloaded, and whether there is data stored on them. If a cloud storage application is downloaded, "There may be a document on a corresponding device that we don't know about," Malcolm said. "We are prepared to try to provide a better service at the enterprise level in the bud." "There are also things in Hyatt's BYOD strategy that require employees to register their mobile devices and prohibit storing confidential data outside the corporate firewall." The hotel chain also said bluntly that it would have remote data erasure for lost or stolen equipment. However, "We are not naïve enough to believe that policy alone will help people comply with the rules without technology," Malcolm said. We ask employees to do the right thing, but we know they can't always be. Malcolm says he wants to urge employees to use an enterprise-class SharePoint system for content sharing, but admits that SharePoint has not yet seen a user-friendly version of the ipad. "If we find someone who likes to use box.net, we're going to sign an enterprise agreement and try to help him reduce some of the responsibilities, and we'd like to offer this agreement to the user community," he said. He pointed out that Hyatt also tried to strengthen its password to avoid the fate of the Romney account stolen: "Ultimately, I would like to use biometric technology or RFID card, employees can only use a 4-digit password card or fingerprint to enter our system." ”