How To Find Out If A Potential Cloud Computing Service Is Secure Enough For You

The use of cloud computing is an IT solution that has proven to be very effective in the recent past. If you are interested in keeping data in a more accessible format or simply moving most of the IT services you need to the cloud for greater convenience, it would therefore make a lot of sense for you to consider using such services.

However, it’s important that you also try to keep your data safe as well. The use of cloud computing and data storage provides a unique set of security problems that you need to prepare for. To ensure that you don’t suffer from problems such as data loss, you would need to put in place security measures that are tailored to cloud computing. Some of the ones that you need to keep in mind include:

Test the cloud facility

If you are interested in using cloud services for things such as data storage and are keen on avoiding any loss, you should make it a habit to have them tested. There are some firms that can do vulnerability scanning on such systems, and then give you a report on the quality of the security of the system. If data loss is going to deal a blow to your operations, paying for this service before using a particular cloud service provider would be a good idea. Of course, you would need to consult a high quality online security firm for quality assessment.

Find out if they have been audited

In addition to that, you should also try to find out if the company or service you are thinking of using has been audited in as far as security is concerned. There are many standards that you can check for, including SSAE 16, SOC2 and SAS70 auditing. In addition to that, you may also need to find out if the company has various certifications such as HIPAA and PCI. Of course, for you to gain a full understanding of how the presence of such certification and auditing affects security, you would need to know what each of these stands for. However, a rule of thumb you can rely on is making sure that you use a cloud storage service that has high quality security certifications, since this means that the company always strives to maintain specific standards.

Get some references

You can also use references as a rough guide to help you figure out if a particular cloud service is secure enough. This can be done in a number of ways. For instance, if you personally know of a number of individual clients who use the service, you could talk to them to find out if they have had any problems in as far as security is concerned. This only works if they have been using the service for a long time. You can also try to go through the list of people and parties that use the same storage service. If they happen to be firms that seem to require a very high degree of security, this can be an indicator that the cloud service in question can provide it.