We had the opportunity to attend part of the SMB Techfest last Friday and sat in on a very interesting discussion about the view on cloud storage for small to medium business owners. It seemed apparent that utilizing cloud storage in some format will increase in the future. The panel even included two early adopters and one of them was operating exclusively on the cloud.
Some of the positive points discussed about using the cloud included:
- Reduced in house IT employees , lowering labor costs
- Reduced time IT employees need to troubleshoot and monitor to be sure systems are up and operational, allowing them to work on other projects
- Easier collaboration with employees and customers located anywhere in the world
- One repository for all company data
One of the things that seemed like an important advantage to me was keeping company data off of employees’ mobile data containing devices (read the post about BYOD and the risks to company data security). In fact, I began thinking that employees should be given laptops without hard drives so that they are forced to work off of the cloud. As long as they are password protecting and encrypting their laptops, they could reduce the risk of a data breach to their companies.
Some of the negative points discussed about using the cloud included:
- Inability to control security measures
- Utilizing cloud providers could put some businesses at risk in the event the provider goes out of business, gets sued, or in some other way jeopardizes the security of the data being stored for other businesses
- Difficulty for businesses to retrieve any data stored in the cloud
Some suggestions to overcome the risks associated with utilizing the cloud included:
- Using a provider that has the history, capital, and capacity to ensure that data is secure and that they will be around for a while
- Utilizing the cloud but back up locally, or use local devices and back up to the cloud
Moving to the cloud exclusively is not for every business owner; in fact, it may not be right for most at this time. But more and more people are using the cloud in some form and the move to the cloud will continue – so best to start learning about it now.
If you are moving your data storage to the cloud and need to safely destroy the data on your old servers and make sure they get properly recycled – give us a call. We offer free data destruction and can often pick up your items for free.