Business
AvePoint Impact of COVID-19 on Workplace Collaboration Survey Reveals 75% of Companies Deployed Microsoft Teams Without Proper Governance or Security
The pandemic induced a rush to digital collaboration that left the over three quarters of businesses leveraging Office 365 and 97% communicating via Microsoft
About this update from Avepoint, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"The pandemic induced a rush to digital collaboration that left the over three quarters of businesses leveraging Office 365 and 97% communicating via Microsoft Teams exposed to potential risk.\n\n\nLONDON, June 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AvePoint, Inc. (\"AvePoint\") the largest data management solutions provider for Microsoft 365, today announced the results of its Impact of COVID-19 on Workplace Collaboration Survey. The 2021 report, conducted in partnership with Exec Survey and iGov Survey, reveals how over 200 unique organisations in the U.K. enabled seamless business continuity amid rapid societal change, where they face security challenges today, and what policies and procedures they are prioritising in the next six months. \n\n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n \nDespite a quick pivot to digital, most companies did not have a roll out plan: Since the speed of deployment was crucial to workplace productivity, three quarters (75%) of organsations deployed Microsoft Teams without proper governance or security in place, leaving them vulnerable to internal and external threats. IT teams express confidence in their collaboration security: Nearly all (95%) of companies believe they are compliant with internal and external regulations. Similarly, only 7% lacked confidence that their digital collaboration deployment was secure from data leaks and unauthorised access. However, only about a quarter are currently doing routine governance, compliance, and security tasks: Annually, just 28% check the settings and membership of Microsoft Teams, to identify potential risks. Only 25% remove guest users, in addition to less than a quarter (22%) who can determine who has access to specific data for audits, and the mere 13% who can restore individual files deleted for a year or longer.\"While the speed at which many organisations pivoted to the cloud this year was nothing short of amazing, that may have come with major security trade-offs,\" said John Peluso, Chief Product Officer at AvePoint, and Microsoft Regional Director. \"But I am optimistic because, as our survey revealed, many businesses now have an opportunity to reduce risk in the near and long-term with proper governance solutions in place.\"\nConsistent with the over 145 million daily active Teams users Microsoft recently announced, AvePoint found that only 3% of companies do not leverage Teams to...