Cloud technology has been a point of anxiety for nonprofit executives and IT managers since the term hit the main stream with SalesForce's launch in 1999. The anxiety, however, typically has stemmed from a fear of the effectiveness of the cloud’s security. What everyone is beginning to realize is that their anxiety has been entirely misappropriated.
According to recent research conducted by QuoteColo, 94 percent of business managers stated that security has actually improved after adopting cloud applications. According to the same study, another 75% of businesses reported that their service availability improved since moving to the cloud.
94% is an alarming statistic, yet despite these eye opening numbers, there continues to be a bevy of misinformation floating around about the cloud, and more specifically, how secure it really is.
What people don’t realize is IT environments, 99 times out of 100, become even more secure when the cloud’s introduced. The biggest argument against the cloud is that because the cloud user doesn’t own the physical servers, their data is less safe. When in reality, the opposite is true. Here are a few reasons why:
1. Firewalls
Typically, offsite cloud applications are held to a much higher firewall standard when compared to a private, on-site cloud solution. Why? Think about it. If you’re a cloud provider who’s harboring the data of multiple clients in your servers, ensuring the security of that data is what you’ve built your business on. As a result, your reputation, and your business’s future, rests in the effectiveness of your security.
2. It’s physically secure, too
At the end of the day, having an on-site server merely gives you the illusion of increased security online because you can physically see your hard drives in your office whenever you want. However, while the majority of security breaches that are covered in the news are cyber attacks, a lot of the smaller data breaches are from negligent or even disgruntled employees. At larger data facilities the number of physical bodies who are allowed to go near and interface with your data is extremely limited.
Think about your on-site server. How many of your employees can walk right up to your server? Or how many times do your employees have to squeeze past it to get new ink for the printers.
3. Threat assessment models
A threat assessment model will identify potential cracks in a cloud application’s security, and automatically work to break those security measures, effectively making the cloud’s security stronger.
At the end of the day, the physical locations of the information, data, and servers has no bearing on the security of your cloud environment. Instead of focusing on that, whether you’re migrating to a new cloud environment, or implementing one at your nonprofit for the first time, ensure you’re paying close attention to access protocols, testable firewalls and your physical access to data.
