A Look At The Technologies That Protect Data Stored On A Cloud

Moving your data to an online facility such as cloud storage is a great way to manage it. This gives you the flexibility to manage the data more effectively, and it also makes processes such as backups much easier. As time goes by, data becomes more valuable. An increasing number of people are willing to do as much as they can to get hold of what they might imagine is valuable data, including corporate information.

For this reason, when you decide to put your data in the cloud, you should get the assurance that it will be safe from all such attempts. You should also be sure that should the data be lost or corrupted, you will be in a position to retrieve it easily and quickly. To facilitate this, there are a few variables you need to look out for when assessing the suitability of any cloud services for data storage. Some of these include:

Encryption

Data encryption refers to a technology in which data is manipulated before storage, so that anyone who gets it without decrypting it will not make any sense of it. Normally, the decryption and encryption requires the use of a key of sorts. When you are thinking of putting data on cloud storage, it would be wise to find out if the service provider also offers encryption services. However, simply noting that they do is not enough proof that your data will be safe with them. You also need to find out the nature of this encryption. They should use technology and standards that are current, since these are usually the most impregnable to any unauthorized decryption.

Access restriction

In addition to that, you can also secure the data on a cloud using access restriction technologies. For instance, you may store data on a cloud, and want to limit its access to only one or two people in the company. You could get a cloud storage service that is designed in such a manner that only the computers that are assigned to these individuals will be allowed to access this data. This is usually done by restricting access to the IP addresses or MAC addresses of the relevant computers. If you want to, you can also add other layers of security, including requiring them to have a password and user name to access that specific information.

Secure connections

A technology that might be related to encryption is having secure connections with the cloud service. Rather than getting the data off the cloud directly, there are some hackers who can intercept the data as it is being transmitted from the cloud servers to the computers that are accessing the data. To prevent this type of unauthorized access, it would be important to use a cloud service that offers secure connections. Various technologies can be used for this, including having to encrypt the data at the beginning of transmission so that any interception will not yield much.

Virus protection

The fact that the data has to be contained in the cloud means that it has to be accessible over the internet. One of the problems that might arise in such settings include the fact that viruses might be transmitted to the cloud, and this might end up corrupting the data and even reducing the security of the whole system. Other types of malware such as Trojans can also be used to route some of the information to other parties. To avoid this, it’s important that you use a cloud storage service that will also offer you some degree of virus protection. You may also need to regularly screen the client computers that will access the data to make sure that they are free of any viruses.

Backups

If you work with a high quality cloud storage firm, the risk of losing your data is often minimal, unless it’s due to user error such as when an employee accidentally erases some of the data. That said, however, it’s still important to ensure that it will be easy for you to get the data back in case you ever lose it. Having the data backed up is the only way to do this. Ideally, the backups should be on two different physical locations so that the risk of losing both the original data and the backup is reduced.

Password policy

If you are going to protect the data using passwords, make sure you have a policy to ensure that these are not easy to breach. For instance, if a large number of employees will need to log on to the cloud in order to retrieve the data, make sure that their passwords are complex enough to prevent the risk of having them broken. It’s also important to have them replaced regularly as well. This limits the amount of time that the service will be vulnerable in case a password leaks out.