In celebration of Data Privacy Day, Cloud Computing Today spoke to Mitch Coopet, CTO and cofounder of Code42 regarding data privacy and security tips for IT managers. To empower employees to work productively in different locations, Coopet remarked on the importance of ensuring that data protection protocols apply to multiple devices and operating systems. Coopet also suggested understanding the volume of unsanctioned apps in an IT environment and revisiting corporate backup policies to ensure data is backed up over a variety of devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. Code42 is the company behind the popular endpoint backup service, CrashPlan, whose customers include Expedia, Yelp and P&G as well as Yale and Stanford Universities.
3 Tips For Protecting Data Privacy For IT Managers And Organizations by Mitch Coopet
1, Balance User Productivity with Enterprise IT Needs:
While typically cast in the role of the “enforcer” — or put more bluntly, saying “no” to employee requests for sharing across personal devices and apps — IT actually has an opportunity to help employees increase work productivity now more than ever. To empower user productivity while maintaining rigorous security standards, data protection policies must support multiple devices and operating systems regardless of physical location. Looking ahead, IT can directly improve productivity and innovation for the enterprise by anticipating how employees will interact with data, particularly on laptops and mobile devices that exist at the edge of the corporate network, as opposed to operating within a traditional data center. Provide secure, easy ways for employees to work on their devices regardless of where they are, and educate them on the productivity tools available to them through IT.
2. Survey Unsanctioned App Usage: With more employees turning to the growing selection of cloud-based apps to get work done faster and on-the-go, it has become increasingly difficult for IT managers to monitor the huge volume of “unsanctioned apps” that live in a given network via their presence on employee-owned devices. According to a report from cloud app security company Netskope, nearly 90 percent of the apps being used at a given company are not formally sanctioned by IT. This underscores a broader trend, and the need for IT to move beyond simply condoning the use of officially sanctioned apps. Put plainly, it’s just not realistic to do anymore. Understanding which apps employees are using to create and access work data is half the battle in developing data management policies that address unsanctioned cloud app usage.
3. Re-think your backup hygiene: According to Forrester’s Forrsights Devices and Security Workforce Survey, over half of employees assume that their companies back up their most important files, whether or not this is the case. The reality is that today with more important work files living on laptops, smartphones and tablets, rather than centralized servers, IT often expects employees to take responsibility for backing up data that is not created or accessed on the network. It comes down to empowering employees to work on-the-go without compromising sensitive company data. One such avenue to ensure this approach is to provide a backup solution that continuously and automatically backs up employees’ endpoint devices and mitigates the risk of a data loss event.
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