94% of online businesses worry about security

94% of business professionals are concerned about how their online content is viewed or managed, signifying widespread privacy worries among businesses, according to a study from private cloud-sharing platform Pushfor.

Results from the research of 200 business professionals accompany a new whitepaper called ‘Making Content Intelligent’. Online privacy expert John Safa wrote the whitepaper, which assesses businesses’ concerns around content sharing.

Of the 200 business users surveyed, 89% share confidential or sensitive information, indicating a profound need for online safety tools.

The survey looked at how businesses share content – all but one uses email, with file sync tools, such as Dropbox, following closely behind with 91%. Social media sites were the third most popular with 74%, and content platforms came last with just under a third (31%).

When asked what they consider the safest way to share content, 59% of business users chose file sync services. Email came second with 35.5%, followed by social media and content platforms, which collected 4% and 1.5% respectively.

Email is inadequate and other content sharing services are not providing the right level of safety – this is the general overview from Pushfor’s research and whitepaper.

“The results indicate that email is unable to provide a full service solution to today’s business environment and doesn’t address businesses’ privacy needs,” said John Safa, Co-founder of Pushfor. “This isn’t a surprise given that email wasn’t created with safety in mind but it does show that it’s quickly becoming irrelevant.”

While privacy issues are a huge worry for businesses, they are not top on their priority lists. The survey shows that ‘ease of use’ is the most important factor when sharing content, with 68.5% citing this as their biggest concern.

Business professionals were also asked which feature they’d find most useful when sharing content. Ease of use came top again, with 74% of respondents citing ‘sending large files with ease’.”

Safa continued, “There are many tools available that solve certain content sharing issues but workload becomes impractical when businesses use several platforms for different reasons. To meet the highest productivity rate, businesses must adopt content sharing tools that meet their overall needs and not just a specific need.”

Pushfor is a new private cloud-sharing app that has been launched to provide consumers with control and safety around content sharing.