Started in 2009, employees have been bringing their smartphones & tablets to work. This ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) phenomenon offers a huge potential to organisations since these devices allow their employees to be more productive. This phenomenon saves organisations huge amount of money since they do not need to invest in these hardware themselves.
In addition to bringing their own devices to work, employees are also taking matters into their own hands by utilising free file sharing services (such DropBox, Google Drive, Sky Drive) in order to access their documents on these devices. This is a result of many companies failing to provide the means for them to access these documents outside the office.
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Unfortunately many of these free file sharing services come with many problems and risks:
[list type=”bullet”]- These website are well known and very public, making it easier for people to guess your password.
- Corporate files are being stored using personal file sharing account belonging to the employee. The IT department has no control over the account. The employee is free to share the document in whichever way he/she wishes to. Should the employee leave the firm, it is not possible for the organisation to terminate the account.
- There is no audit trail to keep track to whom a document is being shared with, or how many people the document is shared with.
- It is not obvious where the data is being stored, who has access to the physical server or whether the data is being replicated by the service provider.
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Problems for the IT administrators:
[list type=”bullet”]- Yet another sign on, another login, another password to manage
- In the event of lost devices, stolen tablets, notebooks : it is a nightmare tracing what is shared and having to reset user’s rights
- Expensive renewals
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