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Businesses are taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the cloud, and the number of powerful apps and solutions available is growing rapidly. But as the mobile ecosystem expands, it can introduce new risks to organizations.Many of the things that businesses are using mobile devices for are enabled by the cloud. For most companies, it’s now the default choice for building and running apps. In fact, 57% of companies said that over half the new business information they create or gather is stored in the cloud.
Mobile devices pose a unique set of threats to enterprises. Typical enterprise protections, such as isolated enterprise sandboxes and the ability to remotely wipe a device, may fail to fully mitigate the security challenges associated with these complex mobile information systems.
— National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)44
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Are you staying on top of cloud-based apps?
According to Netskope, cloud services—defined as requiring a login and being able to store and process data—now make up 85% of enterprise web traffic.43 As well as the increasing use of cloud-based apps via mobile, this reflects the breadth of solutions in everyday use:
- Utilities open to all, often even without a subscription, like WeTransfer
- File storage, transfer and backup apps, like Dropbox, Egnyte and Box
- Publicly available tools used by consumers and businesses, like Slack and Trello
- Business productivity tools, like G Suite and Office 365
- Specialist tools managed through a web console and with web storage, like Adobe Creative Cloud
- Software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps aimed at businesses
- Corporate apps built in-house, often using third-party contractors
But most companies are massively underestimating just how many cloud-based apps their employees are using. Fifty-nine percent of companies said that their employees use no more than 250 SaaS/web-based apps. An analysis by Netskope showed that the average is actually much higher.
The average enterprise uses over 1,295 apps and cloud services, where more than 95% of these are unmanaged with no IT administration rights or even visibility. Of these, 96.3% are not “enterprise ready” and have a Netskope Cloud Confidence Index (CCI) of medium or less.45
Worried about file sharing?
Enterprises are increasingly using cloud-based file sharing-apps such as Dropbox and WeTransfer. In fact, over half (55%) of organizations said that they officially sanction their use by employees.
Organizations must be vigilant. As well as potentially opening the door to additional threats, file-sharing apps can make exfiltration—the “getting the data out” aspect of a data breach—much easier.
According to NetMotion, over a typical 30-day period, 42% of users used at least one public file-sharing service. And in total, each organization used an average of six different ones.46 This implies that many are not standardizing or controlling usage.
84%
Eighty-four percent of organizations said that their reliance on data stored in the cloud is growing.
43 Netskope Cloud Report, Netskope, August 2019, https://resources.netskope.com/cloud-reports/netskope-cloudreport-august-2019
44 Mobile Threat Catalogue, NIST, https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building-blocks/mobile-device-security/mobile-threat-catalogue
45 Netskope Cloud Report, Netskope, August 2019, https://resources.netskope.com/cloud-reports/netskope-cloudreport-august-2019
46 Based on analysis of anonymized and aggregated data from customers and other third parties within North America, NetMotion, September 2018 to August 2019
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