Twitter, Twitter, Everywhere — Netskope Cloud Report

Today we unveiled our second quarterly Netskope Cloud Report, an account of cloud app adoption and usage based on aggregated, anonymized data from the Netskope Active Platform.

In our last Netskope Cloud Report (October 2013), we focused on the enterprise-readiness of cloud apps, rating them against an objective yardstick adapted from Cloud Security Alliance guidance. We continue to maintain these ratings in our Cloud Confidence Index^TM, but for this report, we decided to up-level the conversation and begin talking about active usage and what people are doing in cloud apps — dynamic intelligence that takes a different look at where cloud app risks and opportunities lie.

For one thing, guess what the most popular enterprise app is: Twitter. Yep, not what most would consider an enterprise app at all. We reveal the top 10 apps in terms of usage (we define usage as discrete app sessions – check out the full report for more details on how we measure this). Besides a consumer app topping the list, we thought it was interesting to find three cloud storage apps in the top five – Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box. Moreover, there are an average of 26 cloud storage apps per enterprise.

Another shocker: There are an average of 397 cloud apps per enterprise. And not to pile on, but 77 percent of those aren’t enterprise-ready (meaning they lack key security, auditability, and business continuity features) based on an objective yardstick that we adapted from Cloud Security Alliance guidance.

Perhaps the most interesting finding in the report is what people are doing in cloud apps. The top activities are: edit, view, download, post, and share. These are especially telling when juxtaposed against policy violations, activities concerning data classified as “sensitive” or “confidential,” and data leakage incidents.

You can download the full report here.