{"id":3930,"date":"2012-08-17T16:46:48","date_gmt":"2012-08-17T14:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/?p=3930"},"modified":"2021-05-19T10:28:55","modified_gmt":"2021-05-19T10:28:55","slug":"security-warnings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/blogs\/security-warnings\/","title":{"rendered":"Security warnings?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As is often the case, a recent article caught my eye:
\n– „5 Dropbox Security Warnings For Businesses<\/a>„. I
\nwould actually argue though that this goes beyond just Dropbox.<\/p>\n

The piece uses the recent „life hacking“ of a journalist as a cautionary
\ntale and gives some handy tips for businesses including, monitor Dropbox use
\nand compare cloud service security. It’s definitely worth a read for any IT
\nmanager.<\/p>\n

It’s certainly not an overstatement to say that information and data are the
\nmost important corporate assets in the information age and enterprises (and
\nconsumers) should think long and hard about the right strategy of how and
\nwhere to store data before making a long-term decision. We know, however,
\nthat IT has been forced to scramble in the wake of popular services like
\nDropbox and the incredible exposure well-meaning employees are subjecting
\ncorporate data to.<\/p>\n

But, still, it might be a big mistake to give away the benefits of
\nIT-controlled data sharing without thinking about the consequences. It’s
\nimportant to think about, as the piece suggests, aspects like monitoring of
\nDropbox use in the company, different security levels of cloud services, and
\nways to detect inside and outside data theft. Maybe, as the author suggests,
\ncompanies could use Dropbox as a „public repository:“<\/p>\n

„Until Dropbox adds those stronger security measures, and all employees
\nadopt them, businesses that use Dropbox should inform employees that
\nanything they upload to the service will be treated as „public“ – that is, as
\nif it was published to a public Google Group, Yahoo mailing list, or the
\nlike.<\/p>\n

„“If there’s any information you’re worried about, you’re better off
\nencrypting those files before you upload them. But that adds another layer
\nof work for users, and users are lazy,“ said the threat intelligence manager
\nfor Trustwave SpiderLabs, who goes by „Space Rogue,“ speaking by phone. „It
\nannoys me that companies rely on third-party services like [Dropbox], but
\nthat’s the way that businesses are going.“<\/p>\n

Other security experts agreed with that assessment. „Anything that is really
\nsensitive or extremely valuable or needs to be kept very secret, I wouldn’t
\nstore on anybody else’s servers,“ said Marco Arment, the creator of
\nInstapaper, on hisblog. „That, to me, seems ridiculous unless I held the
\nencryption keys–like with the online backup service that I use.““<\/p>\n

Also – tracking data theft – most IT departments have sophisticated tools
\nthat track data use within the company, so why not use the tools you have
\nfor use outside the firewall?<\/p>\n

„One of the biggest information-leakage threats facing businesses, besides
\nexternal attackers, is malicious insiders. Thus, when weighing if and when
\nemployees can use Dropbox, ask whether your business would be able to detect
\ninformation exfiltration while it’s happening or after the fact. „As an old
\nIT guy, having my employees use something like Dropbox – where the files are
\nno longer accessible to the IT department – makes me very, very worried.
\nBecause as an IT guy responsible for data, I want … to know that if
\nsomeone gets fired, I still have access to all of that information,“ said
\nTrustwave’s Space Rogue.<\/p>\n

„Accordingly, businesses should consider restricting employees to use only
\ncentrally managed file-sharing services. „If I was looking to get a
\nthird-party file-storing service like that, I’d want to ensure that I had
\nadmin access to all of that data,“ he said.<\/p>\n

„The only catch, unfortunately, is that instead of being baked in, decent
\ncloud security can be a costly add-on. Dropbox, for example, now offers
\nDropbox for Teams, which adds centralized administration, better security,
\nas well as Active Directory<\/a> integration. But the cost of the service starts
\nat $800 per year, for just five users.“<\/p>\n

So we say again, why not set up YOUR server as the nexus point, use the
\ncontrols you already have AND give your employees, a simple sharing tool?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Frank about security needs for cloud services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":78665,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61278,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3930\/revisions\/61278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/owncloud.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}