"Bad Habits And Risky Behaviors Put Corporate Data at Risk"

Researchers conducted a new survey of 625 IT and application development professionals across the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany.  More than half of the respondents described their IT environment as hybrid cloud, an increase from 41 percent a year ago. On average, organizations are actively using two cloud service vendors at a time.  While hybrid cloud offers a range of strategic benefits related to cost, performance, security, and productivity, it also introduces the challenge of managing more cloud access.  The researchers found that cloud access solutions, including privileged access management software, slow down daily work for 71 percent of respondents. Respondents reported that the most significant speed bumps were configuring access (34 percent), repeatedly logging in and out (30 percent), and granting access to other users (29 percent).  These speed bumps often drive users to seek risky workarounds, with 52 percent of respondents claiming they would “definitely” or at least “consider” bypassing secure access controls if they were under pressure to meet a deadline. More than three quarters (85 percent) of the respondents share account credentials with others out of convenience, even though 70 percent of them understand the risk of doing so.   More than half of respondents stated that they use unsecure methods to store their credentials and passwords, including in email, in non-encrypted files or folders, and on paper.

Help Net Security reports: "Bad Habits And Risky Behaviors Put Corporate Data at Risk"