Cloud Concerns: Data Security

One major concern business owners often raise regarding cloud-based services involves data security. Obviously, if you’re going to entrust your valuable data to a third-party, you need to insure that the company takes data security and integrity very seriously. Below, you’ll find two of the main points you’ll want to discuss with a potential cloud-services provider.

Where does my data live, and how is it stored? Where your data is physically stored has several implications. You’ll want to know not only where the servers upon which your data resides are geographically located, but whether multiple copies of your data exist in case one of the provider’s data centers goes down. In the case of the Amazon Cloud outages that occurred a few weeks ago, clients who had data mirrored outside of the North Virginia facility were much less affected than those who didn’t. Data that isn’t replicated across multiple geographical locations is vulnerable to total loss. 

Recovery. In the event of a prolonged cloud outage or data loss, what measures does the provider have in place to restore your data to you, how long will it take, and what safeguards are in place to minimize the risk of human or system errors? A permanent data loss could have severe consequences for your business, and having fail-safes in place to prevent such an occurrence are vital. Another important question to ask is, in the event that data restore needs to take place, in what format will your provider return your data to you? Will it be in a format compatible with widely available software, or in some sort of proprietary format specific to the provider?

Data security is a complex issue with cloud computing, and having a trusted advisor to help you navigate the airspace, so to speak, is vital.