Your office’s electric bill keeps climbing, as stacks of computer towers in the backroom buzz away. Its cool that you keep your office old-school, and store all of your data on-site, but the slower workflow and heat they’re generating are making your co-workers hot and bothered. What’s keeping you from upgrading to cloud solutions? Many non-tech savvy business owners have misconceptions regarding the security and other aspects of cloud computing. Let’s discuss some of the common myths regarding the cloud.
Cloud Storage is Less Safe
Lack of understanding of how cloud storage works is why some people may think the cloud is risky. Cloud technology has been around long enough to prove itself secure. Cloud firewalls secure both internal and external networks and essentially add more layers of security. If someone downloads malware in your office, it can easily distribute itself among your entire network and compromise all of your data.
Storing data in-house and on your servers is making your business’ data more vulnerable. Cloud data storage provides constant monitoring, strict access rights, and prevents internal or external malware attacks and data breaches.
Anyone Can Access Cloud Data
All SaaS providers offer data privacy, and the strict rules governing them, and the constant monitoring of your data provides more security than on-premise data. In an office environment, it’s arguably easier for data to fall into the wrong hands due to less stringent authentication demands. With cloud storage, everything gets encrypted in transit. The cloud uses secure keys for each data occurrence, paired with data monitoring creates a considerable deterrent for hackers.
Your customers and your data will be a lot safer with a cloud service than in your own hands. Cloud service providers can generally provide an audit log of what employees are doing with your data if needed.
Providers are obsessed with network security, this is their career niche, can you say the same for your office staff? If cyber-security isn’t something your team specializes in, you are putting yourself at more of a risk to data breaches and malware. Using a high-level cloud provider is like partnering with white-hat hackers whose mission is to find data issues and patch them. Routine updates and patches will keep your data safer in an ever-evolving world of cyber-crime.
I’m Off the Cloud
This misconception is null in one statement: if you are using the internet, you’ve already signed up for cloud services, in one form or another. Cloud technology has been around since the 1950s, where it began as mainframe and time-sharing on a centralized computer resource, according to IBM. It has evolved with strides since then, from the 1990s when companies began offering virtual private network services to replace physical build-outs. We now routinely use browser-based cloud apps, such as Google Apps. Here are a few ways you are already using cloud technology and may not realize it:
- Automatically backing up photos and videos on iCloud if you use an iOS device.
- Checking your email from a phone app.
- Drafting a blog post in Wordpress utilizing multiple devices, i.e., phone and laptop.
- Using an online storage system such as Dropbox.
- Social media apps.
It’s going to become impossible to avoid the cloud if you have a prerogative against it. Government agencies and commercial services are rapidly adapting to cloud solutions that we all inevitably will use.
We Will Lose Data Control
Across industries, maintaining complete control and ownership of data is of extreme concern to businesses and organizations. Especially with the increased regulations and scrutiny required by healthcare and financial enterprises. Cloud providers rise to the occasion for organizations that need to scale in growth while meeting compliance standards.
Many providers specialize in HIPAA compliance, FINRA, contracts, and more. There are private cloud options that only allow specific devices in the network access, creating a secured in-house cloud. Utilizing a multi-cloud strategy is also a preferred method amongst many businesses concerned with data-control. Using multiple-cloud services provides a backup for your cloud backup, then you can rest easy about the rare but not impossible outages.
If you’re sticking to your brick-and-mortar ways, you’re likely gambling with more risk than utilizing secure cloud services for your business. Interested in learning more about how cloud storage can better help your growing business? Reach out to a cloud advisor at Emerge at 859-757-0895.
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