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The majority of UK office workers are in the dark about their employer’s cloud computing policy, and even if they do know they’re likely to ignore it, according to research published by Trustmarque.

The report’s findings, of over 2000 employees, saw the growth of cloud applications used in the workplace, be it approved or through shadow IT, continue to grow, meaning security and compliance fears grow with it. It’s a similar finding to Netskope research from January, which found that while organisations use on average 613 cloud apps, almost 90% weren’t enterprise-grade.

In the Trustmarque study, one in five cloud users admitted to uploading sensitive company information to file sharing or personal cloud storage apps, while a further quarter (28%) said they had used personal email and cloud storage apps to access data from their previous job.

More than half (56%) of office workers admitted their company didn’t have a cloud policy in place, while a further 28% didn’t know if there was one in operation.

Other stats in the report included:

• 40% said they currently or have used apps that weren’t explicitly sanctioned or provided by IT
• A quarter (27%) said they have downloaded cloud apps they no longer use
• 36% admitted they had taken to using applications and services to get around the restrictions of corporate IT

“Many IT departments continue to be stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to managing cloud applications across the business,” said James Butler, Trustmarque cloud services director. “As the research shows, this has led to a considerable lack of clarity when it comes to implementing and enforcing cloud usage policies.

“Organisations should empower their users by considering cloud-enabled self service, single sign-on and identity lifecycle management to simplify adoption and reduce risk,” he added. “The shift in how IT is being consumed by users requires a similar shift in the mindset of IT departments, from being the builder of IT systems to becoming a broker of cloud services.”

A report from CipherCloud in February found the vast majority of cloud apps used by enterprises fell under the category of shadow IT. CloudTech’s sister publication Enterprise AppsTech has covered in the recent past how shadow IT could be a positive, yet the research from Trustmarque uncovers a worrying trend of a laissez faire attitude among employees to the sharing of cloud data.

Cloud computing offerings are almost overwhelming at this point. There are so many different services and service providers competing for your business that it can be hard to know what’s really best for you. Understanding what kinds of solutions work for your business means getting a handle on exactly what solutions are out there and what benefits they can bring an organization. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), for example, is a solution that can offer significant benefits to an organization.

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Over the last few years, Motus experienced a surge in business driven by its transformation to a mobile hub for their customers. As the company expanded their existing client footprint, they seized an opportunity to also integrate mobile workforce data with CRM, sales and expense management offerings. With the new business requirements, Motus knew they had to move from their legacy PHP single stack to a more nimble, service-based architecture to meet the demands of rapid development.

As the new infrastructure development started, Motus’ VP of Engineering Scott Rankin realized that Motus’ existing log management and analytics solution, Splunk, was too difficult to manage and too costly to maintain within their environment. With a team of 11 developers, eight QA engineers and three operations professionals, Scott’s team was losing tens of hours per week analyzing logs across 20 servers at once. The cost of the product, the necessity of on-premise hosting, and the unwieldy interface led Scott to seek out alternative options; he knew they needed an agile, easy-to-use and scalable log management solution.

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Everyone has stayed in a standard hotel room – they all have similar qualities, with similar prices and amenities. You can expect a good night’s sleep, HBO movies on the TV, and a free muffin in the morning. While I may be taking a few liberties with this analogy, I’d argue – the cloud is equivalent to the standard hotel room.
There’s nothing wrong with plain, run-of-the-mill accommodations, but you’d be amazed to find Tim Cook shacking up at the Holiday Inn, and he definitely wouldn’t sign a contract requiring him to stay every time he lands in New York.

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When it comes to data security, identifying what you consider your crown jewels is the first step in the data security recovery program. Legacy products can be expensive and negatively impact performance. Organizations need to realize that the complexity and fear of access control is a thing of the past.
Before we get started on recovery, here are a few things you need to ask yourself:

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Tunisie Electronique, a Tunisian IT services provider, improved their IT service management offerings and capabilities leveraging cloud-based services.
To learn more about better IT control and efficiency using the latest ITSM tools and services, we are joined by Fadoua Ouerdiane, IT Projects Director at SMS and Tunisie Electronique in Tunis, Tunisia. The discussion is moderated by me, Dana Gardner, Principal Analyst at Interarbor Solutions.

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PubNub on Monday has announced that it is partnering with IBM to bring its sophisticated real-time data streaming and messaging capabilities to Bluemix, IBM’s cloud development platform.
“Today’s app and connected devices require an always-on connection, but building a secure, scalable solution from the ground up is time consuming, resource intensive, and error-prone,” said Todd Greene, CEO of PubNub. “PubNub enables web, mobile and IoT developers building apps on IBM Bluemix to quickly add scalable realtime functionality with minimal effort and cost.”

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​I had the chance to sit down with Lee Slaughter, Skytap’s Manager of Information Security, to discuss security in the cloud, the efforts that make up a thorough due diligence when choosing a cloud provider, and how to keep up with external and internal threats to your business.
Noel: Last year, Charles Babcock wrote a piece for InformationWeek on the list of the top 9 worst cloud security threats that was put out by the Cloud Security Alliance. As I read through them, I noticed that the threats were predominantly related to malicious insiders and outsiders, data breaches, denial of service attacks, etc.

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