As more and more small businesses begin to move towards the cloud, there are still plenty of questions unanswered for curious business owners and managers who want confirmation that all of their data and work will be secure and backed up. The reality of the situation is that many business owners, managers, and field reps already use the cloud in their day to day lives—whether at work or during their personal time.
Think about what happens when you want to access a document later on your personal computer. Usually, you create the document, choose a destination to save it to, and click the ‘save’ button. When saving directly to your personal computer, the file is written to the hard drive—a physical device which never leaves your computer and which does not require internet access to view or edit.
The Cloud is very similar in every way other than location. With a Cloud-based system, as soon as the user hits ‘save’ or ‘upload’ that file is sent across the internet and saved on one or more servers around the world. Which server your file is saved on depends on the service being used. For example, anytime a user uploads a photo to Facebook, it is technically being uploaded to the cloud. The photo is saved to Facebook’s servers and can be accessed from any device in the world with internet access. Services such as DropBox and Google Drive exist solely as cloud storage services. Since space on a server is generally very cheap, large companies can afford to invest in the infrastructure needed to support many free users, and monetize their services by offering additional space to paying users.
When a user wants to once again access their file, they simply need to navigate to the service they previously were using and bring up their document. As long as the user has internet access, the file is available nearly instantaneously.
One of the primary concerns for those who use the cloud is how secure their data will be. Enterprise level users of cloud services are often small businesses who have important company, employee, and client data stored on external servers. According to Alert Logic’s Spring 2014 Cloud Security Report, the frequency of attacks on cloud-based services is almost exactly the same as with on-site storage. What is notable however, and what should give serious peace of mind to those moving to the cloud, is that the average number of incidents per impacted customers is much higher on average with On-Premise storage.
Why is this? As the cloud has been adopted by more and more users, large companies have recognized the need to invest heavily in security measures for their services. With the uncertainty consumers have displayed about trusting the cloud with their data, providers have had serious incentive to make sure that their system is as secure as possible from potential data thieves and malware. As the cloud continues to grow—and it will—security investment and innovation will only grow alongside it.
Although many still refuse to make the jump to cloud-based services in their working life, most consumers interact with Facebook, use an email service, or post photos online to some degree. The entire physical infrastructure of our tech-connected lives has begun to transform into an off-site external provider which can offer consumers vast amounts of storage space, security, and the convenience of having their data with them at all times, so long as they have internet access. The Cloud is the future, and the future is here.
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