How Much Can You Trust the Cloud?

We’re all in too deep to walk away from the cloud now. But how much should we trust it? Are we putting too much faith in others to take care of our precious data? In this piece, we’ll look at a few reasons why you might reconsider how much confidence you put in the cloud. We’ll also cover some measures that help make the cloud a safer place for your data.

Examining the Flaws of the Cloud

The cloud is susceptible to a bevy of threats. Here are a few examples that shine a light on what can go wrong.

• Corruption or Deletion – Picturelife was a photo storing app that housed millions of user photos in its database. Back in 2016, the company blundered a data center migration of user data. This resulted in database issues that prevented users from accessing millions of photos. Luckily, this issue was eventually corrected, but it goes to show how easily software problems can leave you without critical data.
• Data Breach and Hacks – We’re not even through the first quarter and there have been several cloud-related data breaches affecting large companies like Estée Lauder, Microsoft, and MGM Resorts. With cybercriminals carrying out constant attacks, what will you do when your data is exposed?
• Outages – 2019 saw cloud outages from major players like Salesforce, Amazon Web Services, Apple, and plenty more. While some outages were as short as one hour, some were as long as 20. That’s some serious What would that kind of downtime cost you?
• Hardware Failure – A French cloud services provider and domain registrar called Gandi.net recently lost several terabytes of user data due to a hardware failure. In the aftermath, Gandi.net told their users that they should have taken their own backups. The company might be tactless, but they’re right.
• Human Error – In 2017, Amazon Web Services went out for several hours, bringing down apps like Trello and sites like Quora. According to Amazon, the outage was caused by a technician who took down too many servers during planned maintenance. Bringing down the extra servers caused a domino effect that made several sites go dark for hours.

Smarter Cloud Computing

You must put some level of trust in the cloud, but you should take precautions to keep data safe and secure. Here are some approaches that work.

• Take Backups – We’re with Gandi.net on this one. You should take your own backups. This includes data stored in apps like Office 365 or G Suite. Google and Microsoft often take backups of their servers, but there’s no guarantee you can get back something that’s accidentally deleted, corrupted, or lost. Luckily, there are simple solutions for backing up G Suite and Office 365.
• Use Secure Passwords – The password “12345” topped NordPass’ list of most popular passwords of 2019—that’s a problem. It should be obvious by now, but it’s essential to have secure passwords, whether admin or end user. Keep those passwords secure, folks.
• Use Two-Factor Authentication – It’s easy to skip the two-factor option available from various apps and services, but it’s an extra layer of security that can save your backside in the right scenario. Use it!
• Choose Vendors Wisely – As Picturelife users discovered, some companies (particularly startups) aren’t stable long term. Whether you’re choosing a vendor for file storage or a more sophisticated cloud-based backup and recovery solution for enterprise, do your research. Look at a vendor’s age, track record, reputation, and downtime before you trust them with your data.

Conclusion

The cloud is awesome. It makes sharing and storing info more convenient, helps employees be more productive, and puts data at our fingertips wherever we are. Of course, bad things can happen no matter where data is. It’s up to you to take measures to keep your data safe from anything. Do you want a cloud backup solution for your business that makes data recovery simple but robust? StorageCraft’s cloud-based data protection solutions disaster-proofs your data no matter where it lives.