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12 Jun, 2015

Personal Info, Healthcare Data Among Most Exposed Documents Within Cloud Apps – Report

SAN JOSE, Calif., Jun, 09 2015 – (ACN Newswire) – Elastica (www.elastica.net), the leader in Data Science Powered(TM) Cloud Application Security, today released its Q2 2015 Shadow Data Report, providing a data-science powered analysis of hundreds of millions of enterprise files stored and shared within leading enterprise cloud applications.

Highlighted in the report are key trends and insights that reveal cloud app usage, the type of sensitive content enterprises share and store in cloud applications, and associated breach risk levels.

Healthcare Data Leads in Exposures

Based on an evaluation of cloud file usage and exposures by industry, Elastica found that the healthcare industry topped the list of verticals with the most policy violations leading to leaks of sensitive PHI (protected health information) data. This is most likely due to the complex nature of both vendor relationships (doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc.) and customer relationships (patient, employees, contractors, insurance companies, etc.) and the greater economic value associated with black market healthcare records.

Average Financial Impact of SaaS Storage Breaches Exceeds $13 Million

This year, Elastica developed a practical measure for risk — the Elastica Total Economic Impact (ETEI) of cloud data exposures for cloud app providers such as Box, Google Drive and others. Based on calculations and data analysis, Elastica concluded that, on average, the direct financial impact to a company due to exposed data in SaaS can be up to $13.85 million.

Most Organizations Have Accounts with Malicious Activities

Elastica’s threshold and behavioral data science analysis showed that 1.34 percent of all accounts had signs of malicious activities, driven by both inside and outside threats such as account hijacking, rogue activities or the malicious destruction of data.

A Quarter of Documents Are Broadly Shared

Elastica found that 25 percent of the hundreds of millions of data files analyzed in company approved apps were broadly shared, and of those files 12.5 percent contained sensitive or compliance related data, meaning they are at the highest risk of being target for a breach. Furthermore, 9 percent of all files were publicly exposed, meaning anyone on the Internet with a link to the shared content could access it.

“Even when companies embrace enterprise-grade cloud apps, there remains a challenge in understanding the sensitive content their users are storing within them, and how that content is being exposed, intentionally or unintentionally. Undetected by traditional security tools, these risky exposures put an enterprise at jeopardy,” said Rehan Jalil, CEO of Elastica. “Enterprises need advanced methods of monitoring, detection and prevention applied by data science and machine learning in order to mitigate financial and reputation damage.”

Access the research – http://www.elastica.net/q2-2015-shadow-data-report/