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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Cloud Concerns: Data Security

A major concern that business owners have regarding cloud based services involves DATA SECURITY.

When entrusting your valuable data to a third-party, you need to ensure that the company takes the data security very seriously. Below we will discuss two of the main points you should address 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 of one provider's data centers fails. In 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? If data loss is permanent, your business could experience severe consequences, which is why we always urge you to have a disaster recovery plan in place. 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?


We know and understand that data security and cloud computing are important issues, so please feel free to contact us, a trusted IT advisory team, with any questions.

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