Survey: In Locking Down Security, Applications May Be the Biggest Concern

In the annals of enterprise open source adoption, concerns over security have always been present. In fact, there are many enterprises that still don't allow their IT departments to deploy open source platforms and applications due to concerns over security.  This week, data from researchers turned up evidence that concerns over security are especially strong in the cloud computing space, and a new survey shows that applications may be the avenues through which security problems are entering enterprises.

Third-party cloud apps are on the rise with many users, and their numbers are growing — to almost 157,000 this year, from 5,500 in 2014, according to CloudLock, a security firm. But 27 percent of apps connected to corporate environments pose a high security risk, possibly exposing corporate data to outsiders, CloudLock finds in its latest cloud cybersecurity report.

The CloudLock report finds:

"There has been a 30x increase in connected third-party apps in just two years.

More than half of third-party apps are banned due to security-related concerns.

27% of apps connected to corporate environments are high risk"

 As GeekWire reports, based on the survey results:

The seven most risky apps? Clash Royale, Goobric Web App, My Talking Tom, Evermusic, Music Player, Pingboard and 8 Ball Pool.

The 10 apps most often banned as security risks: WhatsApp Messenger, SoundCloud, Power Tools, Free Rider HD, Madden NFL Mobile, Zoho Accounts, Sunrise Calendar, Pinterest, Airbnb and CodeCombat.

The top 10 trusted apps: Slack, Asana, Turnitin, Lucidchart, Smartsheet, LinkedIn, Zoom, Zendesk, Hubspot and Quizlet.

 Security is likely to rise to the top for many enterprises, and these concerns could have an impact on which kinds of applications enterprises end up trusting. All the data rolling in points to the fact that application security concerns are significantly rising at enterprises, not falling.