It’s been said many times that you can’t stop progress, and that’s true to the point that it may be one of the more applicable maxims around these days. Especially when it comes to technology, as there’s no way any degree of stepping backwards is going to be tolerated if advances mean real benefits. Acronyms are a challenge for many, but even if you have the slightest amount of digital savvy you’ll know that SaaS stands for Software as a Service and its one of many examples where cloud computing technology has made the hassles of hardware installation a thing of the past. Here at 4GoodHosting we’ve had firsthand benefits from the Cloud and how it’s removed the need for a lot of physical hardware and infrastructure is something any Canadian web hosting provider will be able to relate to. As a collective user base we’re certainly not going to approve of any regression here either, but more and more we’re learning how there are security risks related to cloud infrastructure. That’s not news, and the fact that ease of access increases that risk probably doesn’t come as a surprise either. But that’s the truth of the situation, and it’s something worth looking into, especially as businesses are flocking to software-as-a-service applications with the aim of improving the efficiency of their operations and overall employee productivity. The question is though – is weak control of access to cloud apps putting those organizations’ data at risk? 1.5x Exposure on Average There was a recent study that showed that the average 1,000-person company using certain SaaS apps is likely exposing data to anywhere from 1,000 and 15,000 external collaborators. Similar estimates from it suggested between hundreds of companies if not more would also have access to a company’s data, and around 20% of a typical business and their SaaS files might be available for internal sharing with little more than the click of a link. What can be taken away from that is that unmanageable SaaS data access is a legit problem that can apply to businesses of any size these days. Last year, slightly more than 40% of data breaches occurred...
