The Consequences of Blocking the Personal Cloud

Here’s how it normally goes: Company A lacks a file-sharing solution designed for business use. Employees of Company A, realizing that file sharing is an essential part of their work lives, begin to adopt the cloud services they are familiar with from their personal lives. Meanwhile, the IT department at Company A reads article after article on how these solutions put sensitive data at risk and fail to comply with various laws and regulations.

The IT department then implements their first solution by passively forbidding the use of these tools – a tactic that works for about two hours. Eventually, left with no other choice, the personal cloud is actively blocked within the organization. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

David Linthicum over at infoworld.com make a great point on this topic in his most recent article on the 3 stages of cloud computing resistance. Essentially, the personal cloud – for all its faults – is still more secure than most of the other alternatives. Here’s what he said:

More recently, many IT organizations have cracked down on the use of personal clouds, by enacting policies that explicitly forbid it, by blocking access altogether, or by doing both. Users had to go back to implementing "sneakernets," emailing files, or adopting other less-than-productive approaches. In more enterprises than you'd suspect, users commonly bring in their own mobile hotspots to get around the corporate firewalls.

Those in IT often argue that these clouds are inherently insecure, so they're not to be used. I argue that users need a reasonable alternative to thumb drives, personal email, and sneakernet that IT can support, if not for the users' benefit, then to be more secure. These techniques are much less secure than using certain cloud services.

In other words, it does no good to prohibit or block these tools from employees if you don’t offer them an alternative. As he put it, “The days of just saying no to every new technology that comes down the pike are over. The current generation of enterprise users is tech-savvy enough to use them anyway, if they make their work lives easier and/or more productive.”

The demand for cloud-based file sharing is significant, but many companies are misinterpreting the signals and therefore solving the wrong problems. Instead of blocking cloud technology because of security concerns, they should be adopting the cloud because of its security features. Instead of prohibiting use of consumer-grade tools, they should be encouraging the use of business-class ones.

The trend is moving in the right direction, but there’s a long way to go.