More than 87.3% of enterprises have adopted Microsoft cloud-based services including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Exchange Online, OneDrive and Sharepoint Online.
According to research from Skyhigh Networks, released on the eve of the Windows 10 launch, a full 1.37 terabytes of data are uploaded to Office 365 each month by the average organization, equivalent to approximately 1 billion Word documents.
Out of that, about 17.4 percent of documents in Office 365 contain sensitive data. At 9.2 percent, corporate data such as financial statements, business plans and source code makes up the largest percentage of sensitive data stored in Office 365.
And, 4.2 percent of the sensitive data stored in Office 365 was classified as personally identifiable information (PII) such as social security numbers, phone numbers and home addresses. About 2.2 percent of the sensitive data was protected health information, and another 1.8 percent was payment data including credit card and bank account numbers.
Perhaps the most shocking of the report’s findings was that enterprises have an average of 143 files in Office 365 with “password” in the filename.
All of this means that security should be ever more tantamount to companies using Office 365. And notably, there are about to be a lot more of them, considering that the new Office for Windows 10 universal apps require an Office 365 subscription. This should drive adoption of OneDrive and SharePoint Online.
Already, Office 365 has already established a foothold in a majority of enterprises and provides a benchmark for future growth. The majority (87.3 percent) of organizations have at least 100 employees using Office 365, however 93.2 percent of employees are still using Microsoft on-premise solutions. This finding suggests that while Office 365 has tremendous traction in enterprises, it is in the early innings and there is a massive opportunity ahead to transition all employees to Office 365.
Further, the report found that the average large organization collaborates with 72 business partners on Office 365. Top industries collaborating with partners via Office 365 are high-tech, manufacturing, energy, financial services and business services, respectively. This makes Office 365 one of the top “collaboration” services connecting businesses to each other.
While Microsoft offers security for its cloud-based services, many enterprises require an additional layer of protection for corporate data in Office 365.
“It’s important to strike a balance between what tools and services you provide your employees and what security controls to have around those services to track data and manage confidential information,” said Tim Topkins, senior director of security innovation at Aetna. “Companies should look for solutions that make the secure path the easy path. A frictionless approach to visibility, compliance, data security and threat detection on top of a service in demand like Office 365 creates a secure and productive workforce.”