Should we trust cloud storage companies to keep our data safe?

1. Cloud computing which is able to store both data and applications at a far distance rather than on your own premises can cut down your expense on Information Technology sharply as well as accelerate the speed of your operations.

The point is whether this service is secure or not. In spite of the rise of public cloud platforms which are provided by such companies as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, less than 10 percent of the world’s data is presently kept inside the cloud. And the reason why a lot of companies are held back from adopting cloud services is security.

2. What are the good points of cloud?

Constructing your own data center seems to be really costly as well as time-consuming, whereas managing hundreds of software applications chews up resources of Information technology.

In case you are able to outsource a lot of this hardware as well as software to specialist technology companies which could either enhance or reduce the level of service regarding to your requirements, you can save much of your both time and money.

Leaders of entrepreneurs are seeking way to optimize and develop their operation of work, and of course, cloud is something that can help them in terms of decreasing costs as well as providing better customer experience. This statement was made by Gavan Egan, the managing director of cloud and IT solutions for global telecoms company named Verizon.

Last but not least, being capable of coming into a range of services based on cloud can help you develop new products at a rapid pace, possibly giving you a competitive edge.

3. What are the drawbacks?

The top risk is giving up monitoring of your data to someone else who takes advantage of various data centers in far places. And when a disaster takes place, you will also be putting your data next to some other else. More precisely, your data could be lost, wiped, corrupted, destroyed or even robbed.

What is more, there is also a danger that firms will suppose all the security has been cared about by outsourcing file and data management to a third party. But you must not assume that because it is still your data and you take responsibility of it.

4. How could cloud storage companies protect our data securely?

In fact, the most undeniable method is via encryption, no matter when the data is in transit or while it is at rest on the cloud servers. This is explained by Ian Massingham who is the chief evangelist of Amazon Web Services for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Amazon Web Services, which has been the biggest public cloud platform vendor with more than a million active clients a month, owns more than 1800 security controls that govern its services.

And their clients can opt for controlling their own encryption keys if they want as well as set up the rules for those can or can not have approach to the data or applications.

5. What other security means are they taking advantage?

According to Mark Crosbie, the international head of trust and security for Dropbox, the cloud file storage and collaboration company, they way data is encrypted is able to accelerate the level of security as well.

While the chief executive of cloud competitor Box claims that instead of delivering the files, Box will send a link to that file so that you can preview the content without factually downloading the data. And their software was created in order to transfer a much safer way of sharing content.