Control of Company AssetsĪllowing users to store and access company data in personal file syncing accounts essentially amounts to a release of control over company assets.

If a breach were to happen, they wouldn’t have an audit trail of the data involved. Plus, the fact that company data is siloed in various personal Dropbox accounts means that the company has no centralized visibility of that data. For one thing, the encryption offered is in some cases not as strong.īut perhaps more importantly, if members of an organization are using separate personal accounts to access and share company data, syncing it to who knows how many devices, the opportunity for that data to be compromised-say, through a stolen phone or laptop-increases exponentially. Data Securityįor a number of reasons, the free personal accounts offered by vendors such as Dropbox and Google are not nearly as secure as the paid business versions of the same solutions. Why You Shouldn't Use a Personal Dropbox at Work 1. While it may seem like the employee is simply taking praiseworthy initiative and that the CEO is taking necessary steps to grow the business, the use of personal file-syncing accounts is highly problematic from a technical perspective for at least two reasons. Or a CEO uses her personal Google Drive to share a file for review with an important potential client. Perhaps an employee uses his personal Dropbox account to access work files at home. One common instance of the drive for convenience leading to poor security-and poor business practice-is the use of personal file syncing accounts, such as Dropbox, for work purposes.

This happens at every level within companies, including the C-suite. People want to do their jobs efficiently, and sometimes necessary measures for data security seem to slow them down.

One of the biggest threats to a business’s cybersecurity is the drive for convenience.

Is dropbox free secure