Security is the biggest obstacle for moving data to Office 365

CipherPoint revealed the findings of its first State of Collaboration Security Report highlighting security issues with collaboration platforms such as Microsoft SharePoint, SharePoint Online, Office 365 and file servers.

According to the report, security and compliance requirements are the primary issues preventing organizations from moving their critical content to the cloud. Unauthorized employee access and information leakage are noted as the biggest concerns for on-premises SharePoint deployments.

Key findings include:

  • 63 percent of respondents noted that security and compliance requirements are holding back adoption of Office 365 and SharePoint Online.
  • Nearly 80 percent of Office 365/SharePoint Online users stated that they have never scanned these cloud collaboration repositories for sensitive or regulated data. In addition, nearly 50 percent of file server and on-premises SharePoint users have never scanned their collaboration sites. This suggests that large percentages of users of these platforms have no idea how much content security risk is present in their collaboration systems.
  • According to the survey, 27 percent of respondents are less likely to move to a cloud service due to the fallout from the Edward Snowden breaches and fear of compromising data.
  • For SharePoint on-premises, the top two threats cited to data were unauthorized employee access to confidential information (80 percent), and information leakage (74 percent).
  • Actual security breaches in SharePoint on-premises are a fairly common occurrence, with 26 percent of respondents indicating they experienced between one and three breaches in the past 12 months. However, the percentages go down as the number of breaches increase, as 5 percent noted between four and six breaches and 2 percent indicated between seven and nine breaches over the last year.

With more organizations moving sensitive and regulated data to on-premises and cloud collaboration and file sharing platforms, data security is the critical issue. However, the results of our survey show that the adoption of cloud collaboration platforms such as SharePoint Online and Office 365 will continue to stall due to security concerns,” said Mike Fleck, CEO, CipherPoint. “Before moving to SharePoint or the cloud, customers must ensure that they have the technology and processes in place to keep control of their sensitive data.”

The CipherPoint report was based on a survey of over 100 IT professionals and SharePoint administrators and architects over a 45-day period between September and October 2013.

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