New laptop models are usually lighter and smaller, but that comes at a price. Hard drive capacity restrictions are becoming increasingly tight, and this is creating a serious problem. Where can you store all those photos, music files, movies and documents that were once neatly stored in your laptop?
These days, people use the cloud as their primary file storage location. Firstly, it’s difficult to decide on this for the first time. Yes, you can upload files to this mysterious system and delete them from your machine, thereby freeing up memory space. But you need to have faith that when you need these files, you will be able to access them, no matter where you are.
Should you trust cloud storage? Let's consider what concerns there are about the security of data storage in the cloud.
How does this work
If you store data in the cloud, this means that your photos and other documents, as before, are stored on servers that belong to the companies providing the cloud storage service. When you sign up for cloud storage, you are renting a digital storage device.You upload your data to storage to free up storage on your devices, and access your files by logging into your account. Cloud services operate over the Internet, rather than through a program installed on your computer, so you access your data by visiting the website of the company that provides you with the usual service.
Which cloud is yours?
When we look at the sky, there is more than one cloud, but we talk about all the clouds as one big system. Many of the sites you probably already use—like Gmail and Facebook—store your data in their own cloud. this allows millions of users to access these sites simultaneously.Private companies also have private clouds that are used by employees and customers of these companies. This allows information to be shared between different computers.
There are also large public clouds where users buy shares. You can purchase either a specific amount of storage capacity or unlimited storage on an annual basis from the cloud service provider you choose.There have not yet been any major security breaches in public clouds, but there have been many known misconfigurations in Amazon's web-based cloud storage services that put data at risk. Therefore, security policies must extend to corporate data stored in the cloud.
Data encryption
Regardless of the type of cloud, the data stored in it is encrypted. Encryption is provided in data storage systems such as Dropbox, Amazon Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and many others. As a result of encryption, stored user data appears as a meaningless string of characters to anyone who does not have the decryption key.However, you should not assume that the key itself is safe. Most services also store the decryption key so that users don't have to enter it themselves. This means that the user cannot lose the key, but the key may fall into the wrong hands.
Cloud storage is safer than local storage
There is an obvious factor that makes storing data in the cloud safer than on a computer. You can accidentally spill water on your computer and damage it; With the cloud this is impossible. The cloud cannot be stolen, it cannot be dropped.Second, even if you treat your computer with care, security measures in the cloud are almost certainly stronger than on most personal devices. This does not mean that the risk is reduced to zero.It is important to keep in mind that if the end device from which data is accessed is compromised, the attacker will have the same access to the data as an authorized employee. Therefore, it is important to implement secure authentication methods, including multi-factor authentication, and educate employees on the importance of keeping sensitive credentials secure.
