Cloud services are now being adopted by many companies due to the numerous benefits they offer to businesses. The cloud can provide more choices of communication facilities and many companies are said to have reported an increase in the efficiency of their teamwork.
However, cloud computing services are known to have unique attributes that may require risk assessments in various areas such as data recovery, data integrity, privacy and critical evaluation of certain legal issues that involve regulatory compliance, auditing and e-discovery.
Services customers are required to demand transparency and must avoid those vendors who refuse to reveal their information concerning security programs. They should ask questions that are related to risk control processes, policy makers, technical mechanisms, operators and coders. The following are the cloud issues you should be aware of:
Use of Internal Cloud Is Said to Be Inherently Secure
Most companies have moved away from using public cloud services and have instead opted for a private cloud area. This type of cloud is hidden by a firewall and many believe that it can increase the level of protection. However, this is not the case; companies need to understand that protecting the cloud by a firewall does not guarantee a safe solution.
Lack of Visibility Poses Safety Risks
Most cloud providers are invisible and this could pose some safety risks to businesses. Therefore companies must make an informed decision when moving their files to the cloud since there will be lack of authority to deal with eventual risks that are associated with this operation.
Regular security applications have attracted a lot of attention for a long time. If it�s possible, the application can be rebuilt to provide a reliable deployment for cloud services. This action will help the application components to be more resilient. It�s important to note that cloud provider will not help you during this process.
Long-Term Viability
Ideally, cloud providers will never be swallowed up by other companies, get acquired or go broke. In case this happens, consumers must be assured that their data will be safe. You should ask your provider what measures they have put in place to return the stored data to the consumer in case their company goes under.
Sensitive Data Files Need a More Secure Storage
Service consumers should be careful about the storage of sensitive information using the cloud storage technology. However, the solution is to encrypt your data and the question will be how and where to decode it. It�s advisable that encrypted data should never be stored together with the coding key.
Access to Files and Transfer Rates Depend on Internet Speed
To access the files from the provider�s data storage, the consumer must have a stable and reliable internet connection. It�s important to note that wired internet can be affected by the vagaries of nature. Even though a consumer can access these file via mobile devices, their uses are still limited.
Cloud technology is still a wise choice for providing storage service to individuals, small businesses, public organizations and many others. However, one needs to understand the security issues involved when signing up with a cloud provider.
By Max Taylor