Here’s an article that I thought I would share about how to stay safe in the cloud…
While I would not say it is the end all, be all post for cloud security, it does point out some great ways to protect yourself.
As businesses move to hosted solutions such as SaaS (Software As A Service), cloud storage, and get away from their local servers, they often forget two things… One is that bandwidth is not as cheap and available as you would like for it to be (cloud solutions require gobs of bandwidth goodness), and the other is security.
I recently encountered a small company who had switched from a local Microsoft Exchange server to a hosted Microsoft Office 365 solution, and to simplify things, the system administrator had created the 40 accounts, and forced them all to be the same password and did not require anyone to change them.
Turns out, there was malicious software running on one of the computers in their organization (they were lacking a dependable anti-virus package, but that’s another story) and the person or group that was watching that machine, obtained the account names from the exploited computer, and tried the same password, only to find each mail account was the same.
The person, or persons were able to watch every single incoming and outgoing email, as well as have full access to previous email and contacts.
It took a week or more before their IT staff determined what was going on. By then, the damage was done. Lots of data was potentially harvested. How much, nobody will ever know.
Before you contemplate a move to hosted services (the cloud), consult with your IT service provider, or enlist the help of an IT consultant that can give you the whole story, not just tell you how much money you are going to save. Homeland Secure IT offers full IT consulting, service, support and sales of cloud services in the Greenville and Upstate area and we work with businesses every day who want to save money and be safe. Call us at 864.990.4748 or use that handy CONTACT link in the menu bar above.