Are Your Files In The Cloud Really Safe?

Till mid of 2007, reference to "Cloud" was exclusively confined to meteorology only, but very soon it has become one of the most popular technology concepts in the computing lexicon. Utilizing the concept of virtualization, Cloud service providers are using their one or more physical servers to create multiple virtual servers through which they are offering managed IT support to a large section of customers.

Cloud computing is interesting and worth to be taken into consideration, especially by businesses because it can save a company from spending dollars on deploying its own IT resources or allocating a staff for its management. Whether a start-up or well established company, cloud computing is a smart choice to facilitate business needs like online data storage and backup, Web-based e-mail management, office suites and document hosting, database processing, etc.

Leading companies like Google, IBM, Amazon, Oracle Cloud, Salesforce, Rackspace, are some of the well-known cloud vendors who are offering cloud services. Likewise, there are many other trusted and certified third party cloud service providers, who will connect a virtual server to your computer via a communication network, so that you can use that server to run an application, store data or run other computing applications on that server rather than using just your local computing devices. As you will be performing your computing tasks in a virtual server so you will be able to access it from anywhere and any computer provided you have access to that server. Thus, you don’t need to have an in-person access to your computing device to access or store your data or to run an application.

Why Cloud Services Are Still Questioned on Grounds Of Security?

Despite wide acceptance of cloud service, great benefits it offers in terms of broad access across multiple devices, rapid elasticity and scalability, resource pooling, etc, there are wide concerns related to cloud computing. While a business decides to take up third party services like storing data, or exchanging of mails, or emails management etc, in a way they are assigning a third party to be the guard of their valuable data. In such a scenario, it is genuine to get occupied with doubts:

• Is my data safe on the cloud?
• Are there backups of data?
• Can cloud services be hacked?
• Am I putting my business at risk of a cloud service provider?
• Is it prudent to outsource the data backup and security of important business files to a third party?

These kinds of concerns are obvious but the question remains - "Are these concerns or doubts raised for right reasons?" These kinds of doubts arise when your brain plays a clever trick on you that let you believe that your business can do a better job if you yourself take charge of the protection and up time of your systems and not a third party. You are probably harboring the fallacy that till the time you are controlling your business yourself, it is most secured.

This fallacy is somewhat similar to what causes fear of flying in many individuals. Just because the controls of airplane is in the hand of the pilot and the passenger on the plane has no control on his life he fears that he is in danger. In fact more risky is his drive to airport but as in the car his life is under their control so he feels safe. Cloud services vendors are like experienced pilots who are well-trained and operate with fully proven contingency plans, have their backups and a team of professionals, who look after the management of the service on a regular basis.

Points to Check While Selecting Your Cloud Vendor

The aforementioned point is not to propagate the idea that you should be blind folded and hand over your business files and data to any third party cloud service provider. Of course there are certain aspects and points that you must take into consideration to ensure that business data and files are really safe on cloud.

Concern with up-time: If your business is already exposed to the Internet and just required to be kept online then up-time should not be a huge concern for you. While hosting the online presence of your service in-house you must have idea about potential downtime issues and ways to deal with them. But if you are running your business offline and want to transform it into Internet-based service like moving from Office to Google Docs or using Salesforce.com instead of an offline CRM system, etc, then proceeding with caution will be wise. Here you need to conceptualize whether you will be able to cope up with several hours of downtime and if it happens how you will cope up with the same. Although, down-time doesn’t occur often but there are rare cases of it even.

Verify important things: If you are hiring a cloud service company to manage an important business function like file transferring, data storage etc, then it gets more important to hire a trustworthy vendor who can make best security arrangement available to you. Hence, you should question and confirm the following points with your potential vendor.

• Do they transmit and store encrypted data?
• Are third-party security audits regularly performed?
• What is there full-time employee’s workforce?
• What is the up-time track record of the company?
• For how long the company has been in business?

Data Portability: There can be a change of plan anytime. Suppose, after three or four months of service, you want to quit continuing with your current vendor and want to try out another vendor’s service or suppose the service provider you hired ran out of business or for any other reason you want your data back, then how your vendor will do it should be one of your prime concern. Anytime, when you want to move out of a particular cloud server and at that time your data should be easily portable. Be upfront and ask your vendor regarding this and if they don’t have a concrete answer then it’s better to avoid it. Even if it cites ways of data portability to you, check whether it is possible or not. Suppose you have stored 400 GB data and your vendor says that for porting your data out of their cloud server you have to download it then you can imagine the number of days it will take to download 400 GB data, so it is not a feasible solution.

Wrap Up

It is true that using cloud services you can add a lot of efficiency to your business; especially it saves you from making unwanted expenditures on building your own in-house IT support system. If you chose the right vendor, security, downtime are not the legitimate dangers to get concerned. Yes, you have to work with a third party but it won’t risk the security of your data. However, before selecting your vendor, remember to get a clear idea on various ways of cloud data portability. If you’re thinking of using a cloud solution, though, remember to consider data portability.

About the Author: Brooke M. Perry is an ardent technician associated with Qresolve online pc support with wide experience of fixing issues with PCs, laptops, tablets and smartphone. With a strong track record of devising effective ways of online tech support and system security, she has so far helped thousands of users across the globe.