Keeping Your Cloud Presence Straight: Spiceworks Launches Free Detection Feature

If your boss asked you to identify all of the various SaaS-based providers that are being used across your corporate network, how long would it take you to put together a report? This isn’t academic: As more of your end-users sign up for these cloud-based services, it becomes increasingly harder to maintain the appropriate enterprise security policies as the number and kinds of files stored there increases.

One solution is to set up stringent firewall policies to block these services, or at least make using them more onerous. But there is another way: better and easier reporting. That is the route that Spiceworks is taking today with an enhancement to its v6.0 service that includes cloud discovery services.

“Knowing which cloud services are running on my network is essential to maintaining security and helping save money,” said Andy Phelps, an IT Manager at HPS Group and a Spiceworks user. “The new free cloud service discovery features offered by Spiceworks make it simple for me to monitor cloud services usage and to find out more about the various offerings available for my business.”

The service supposedly can detect “up to more than 40 different providers,” including Amazon’s S3, Carbonite, Checkpoint, Citrix, Dropbox, LogMeIn, McAfee, Mozy, Rackspace, Sophos, Symantec and VMWare. You can automatically scan your networks to see exactly which cloud services are in use and by whom. Spiceworks is a large community-driven monitoring and troubleshooting service, all of which is free of charge.