The cloud frees up hard drive space, allows accessibility from any device at any location and eliminates the need to conduct time-consuming backups. It also makes services available to businesses that many thought were not available. These include advanced phone services and access to virtual meeting spaces where you can get almost anything accomplished. The key drawback is the potential lack of security of your data.
Information that travels through the Internet is susceptible to hackers if you don’t have the right levels of security in place. Heightened employee awareness and procedures, firewalls, encryption and added levels of personal security such as identity theft protection can be potent in keeping businesses safe. Here are two key growing areas of the cloud and how they offer secure ways to operate.
Internet Based Computing (IBC)
Internet based, IBC or Cloud computing relies on sharing computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications. Cloud computing applies traditional supercomputing, or high-performance computing power, normally used by military and research facilities, to perform tens of trillions of computations per second. This power has now found its way to the business world.
Cloud computing also offers businesses the ability to avoid the significant upfront costs of purchasing and installing software applications and hardware systems. Companies rent software applications and storage space as required and outsource routine information technology operations. The best IBCs provides fast data transfer and real-time communication, promoting easy group collaboration. Employees log in anywhere including their homes, or on the road, then interact in real time with colleagues who can also log into the system anywhere. There is unlimited storage capabilities, and processing capacity with no downtime and complete avoidance of data loss.
Is the Cloud Safe?
Sixty-four percent of IT professionals say that cloud solutions are more secure than legacy systems. Here are some of the reasons why they made this claim.
- Cloud facilities have strong physical security measures
From a physical security standpoint, most cloud business use a locked door to inhibit access to their IT equipment. The top cloud service companies have physically secure sites in restricted buildings with armed guards. In addition they have sensitive security measures that protect the physical location of the servers from anyone. Employees, vendors and visitors are physically separated from a company’s mission-critical data at all times. This lack of physical access makes it exponentially more difficult for third parties to access data and manipulate it.
- Cyber security expertise
Cloud facilities have protocols focused squarely on keeping data safe and avoiding hacks. They spends millions of dollars each year to ensure they have the latest and most effective security equipment and software and they invent custom processes to fit any client’s specific needs. Cloud infrastructure is monitored at all times in order to head off potential security threats. They also undergo at least annual audits to protect against flaws in their security systems.
What you can do if you want even higher levels of security – Virtual Data Rooms
A virtual data room, or VDR, is an online database in which companies can store and share confidential information, usually used during a financial transaction. It may also be described as a type of electronic repository or document filing system. These secure repositories are accessible in the cloud, by secure connection, and allow parties to interact in a secure space to review documents and conduct business.
Many companies use VDRs to securely store and share critical and sensitive corporate data and are most commonly used during dealmaking. The information stored in a data room is generally private documentation that is typically considered to be of high value to the company or owner of the data room.
Of course, in addition to traditional record keeping that is required for many financial, legal, and tax matters, a lot of companies have other important documents and information that they need to retain and would like to store safely to ensure that it remains confidential. These include intellectual property such as trade secrets and copyrighted works. The growing importance of data and the ensuing increased demand to ensure that such data is adequately safeguarded created the need for the virtual data room. It has evolved into a unique and powerful cloud-based solution today.
VDRs represent the highest levels of security for data storage and meetings, utilizing the power of the cloud to offer clients unique and powerful services. They are one of the many reasons why the cloud is considered to a very safe storage option for all types of businesses.