A rash of security breaches at web marketer Epsilon, LinkedIn and Twitter prompted an interesting article in the San Jose Mercury News where journalist Steve Johnson claims that experts are saying that too little is being done to prevent cybercrooks from walking away with handfuls of credit card numbers, corporate trade secrets and other sensitive data.
The cloud holds many trade secrets, personal health information, confidential financial information and corporate documents. The cloud continues to collect droves of business information every day. Experts claim that ¼ of the world’s business data is in the cloud and a target for hackers to strike.
Did you know that the NASDAQ was victim to a cyber attack? In October 2010, the NASDAQ’s Directors Desk, which holds records for thousands of corporations, was hit with a security breach. This serious event prompted several federal investigations and speculation that cybercrooks could have easily spied on secret communications of company board executives. The NASDAQ remains tight lipped.
Definitions of cloud computing vary from solution provider to solution provider, but basically cloud computing involves a service accessible over the Internet. Cloud storage can save a company thousands of dollars and make it easy to retrieve from nearly anywhere online, for staff and hackers.
The cloud is also used to send email, print from mobile devices, exchange medical records and share information on social networks. Services such as Dropbox and Google Drive allow small business to store information online and services such as Evernote (which also experienced a serious compromise to their security recently) allow business to keep notes on clients, staff and other potentially confidential information online.
Even with all these potential security vulnerabilities, the number of subscribers will double from 625 million this year to 1.3 billion in 2017, according to market researcher IHS.
Small to midsize business and large corporations are the biggest adopters of cloud technologies. Gartner has predicted that global revenue from public cloud services will soar from $91.4 billion to $206.6 billion in 2016.
Symantec reported in January that 43% of the 3,236 businesses it queried had “lost data in the cloud.” Although Symantec research does not indicate how much was lost due to cyberattacks, we can assume it was a factor.
What is stopping cloud adoption for some corporations? The thought of government or legal action deters many businesses from keeping data in the cloud, while others accept the risk and ensure due diligence is completed to make sure data safeguards are met.
What will your business do when faced with the decision about cloud computing?
Our team of cloud consulting specialists is here to help you make the right decision regarding your cloud services and IT services.
Call us and speak with our Baltimore cloud specialists today.
