In a recent post, I highlighted my belief that one of the most worrying new threats of the cloud was the Bring Your Own Cloud.   A recent study from LogMeIn and Edge Strategies confirms this risk by focusing on the use of cloud-based services.  They coined it as Bring Your Own App (BYOA)

Following is their infographics that summarizes the major outcomes.

In a nutshell, the problem is more worrying than expected.   Currently, a huge amount of applications (> 85%), and thus data, are under the radar of the IT team!    One of the answers that we proposed is that IT should provide company blessed solutions.   I am a strong proponent of this solution.   This study seems to show that it is not sufficient: 64% bring their own apps when a similar solution is already in place.  I must confess that during the era before cloud, I was doing the same, for instance, using Firefox when IE was blessed, or my preferred software editor…

Even if you ban BYOD, BYOA will be here.   This unavoidable BYOA means that we are losing more and more control on sensitive data.  What is the proper answer: DLP (dubito ergo sum), more control of what is executing on the user’s computer (not compatible with BYOD)…

BYOD + BYOC + BYOA = BRYLC 

Unfortunately, cloud is here and we cannot escape it.   THus ranting is useless.  We have to find new solutions and methods to protect our assets.  What answer do you suggest?

Thanks to Gomor for the pointer