Is your Baltimore – Washington DC business concerned about yet another cloud service hit by hackers?
Another popular online service was hit by hackers earlier in March and this one could have some serious privacy and even compliance fallout.
Online note taking service Evernote has been hit by hackers and all users were forced to change their passwords. Evernote has over 50 million global users and the forced password change is being seen as just a safety precaution.
Evernote, based in Redwood City, California reported on their website that a hacker or hackers had been able to access sensitive client information. What was the type of sensitive data compromised? This detail is unknown but what if it was legal information, healthcare related documents or any other information that falls under privacy or compliance rules?
The company sent an email on Sunday stating that they believe the attack followed similar patterns of many recent high profile attacks on other cloud based services.
Evernote has no evidence that any customer data had been tampered with or any payment information compromised. What they are saying is that the intruder was able to gain access to Evernote user information, including usernames, email addresses associated with Evernote accounts and encrypted passwords.
What does this mean for the average small business who used cloud based services like Evernote?
Sure, many of these applications can assist in the reduction of corporate software expenses and licensing fees. Evernote offers a free and paid service for business.
However, businesses with any confidential customer information, accounting information, credit cards and especially healthcare or legal information should never trust this information to a service such as Evernote.
We recommend speaking with our team of IT professionals to learn what solutions are available to business today. These business grade services ensure that your security is the number one focus and if your industry is tightly regulated, then a private cloud service may be in order to further safeguard all your business information.
There are lessons to be learned from the Evernote security compromise. Business must do their homework prior to moving parts of the business network to the cloud. Having a team of cloud consulting professionals to help chart your course is one of the best choices.
Speak with our experts about cloud offerings today.
