BYOD exposes the perils of cloud storage

SOURCE: Computerworld

The dangers of using consumer cloud storage systems became clearer when a hacker claimed that he accessed presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s Dropbox storage and email accounts using an easily cracked password. The apparent hack of Romney’s accounts came on the heels of IBM’s rollout of a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy that bans the use of Dropbox due to concerns that hackers could easily access sensitive information stored there.

Such examples make it clear that it’s risky to keep corporate data on consumer-oriented cloud storage systems, say IT executives and analysts. “IBM has the world’s biggest BYOD program, and they just locked down Evernote and Dropbox because they discovered their future product plans and all sorts of really sensitive data was being beamed automatically out to these services,” said Dion Hinchcliffe, an executive vice president at IT consulting firm Dachis Group.

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