As reported in The Canadian, “Companies significantly increase the risk of data leakage when employees with smartphones and tablets use storage services in cloud computing, shows a study at the University of Glasgow.”  The real problem is that the risk of data loss does not increase with cloud computing, it increases when employees leverage their own devices, such as smartphones and tablets, that happen to leverage cloud for back-end services.

This is going to be a constant fit for most in enterprise IT over the next several years.  Employees won’t give up their personal devices at work, and they don’t want to carry around two phones and two tablets.  Thus, those in enterprise IT need to get better at managing these devices, and thus keep data secure.

While cloud computing is often the scapegoat of those looking for “data leaks,” data has really been leaking for some time.  Cloud, or no cloud.  USB drives have been around for years, and much of the data that walked out of companies was on those kinds of drives, as well as stolen laptops.  So, while it’s cool to kick the cloud in the face, IT has larger problems to address.