Eighty-nine percent of employees retain access to corporate apps after they leave their respective companies, according to the 2014 Intermedia SMB Rogue Access Study. Just fewer than half of former employees (45%) retained access to "confidential" or "highly confidential" data, and 49% logged into ex-employer accounts.
In an era when bring your own device and work-from-home policies enable employees to work from anywhere on their machine of choice, the lines between work devices & information, and personal devices & information is blurring. In fact, 68% of survey respondents admitted to storing work files in personal cloud storage services.
Organizations are not doing a good enough job keeping up with employees as they leave their respective companies. Six out of 10 respondents were not asked for cloud logins when they left jobs and 88% retained access to the file sharing services they used at previous jobs.
Inside jobs
The data revealed in the survey presents a serious issue for organizations. Security breaches are on the rise and the cost of data exposure is increasing. By not restricting access to apps and information after employees leave companies, employers are opening themselves up to an additional avenue for data theft.
The survey was conducted by Osterman Research for Intermedia during May and June of this year. The majority of the survey's 379 respondents hailed from the US and worked at companies of fewer than 1000 employees.
