How To Improve The Security Of Cloud Backup

By Author: Cave Johnson
Total Articles: 28
Comment this article

A lot of companies turned to cloud computing at the turn of the century and today cloud computing virtually became a norm rather than an additional aspect. With the rapid growth in cloud computing services there's also a slight discomfort or rather a concern towards the security aspect of the whole business. Many organizations that use cloud computing and other online service providers are potentially at a risk from their competitors for data theft and also threat from cyber-attacks originating possibly from hostile countries. Thus there is a need to continuously enhance security to ensure data integrity and security at every cost.

While using secure cloud services it is important to pay special attention to the security framework. There is, in general, an ambiguity as to whose responsibility it is to ensure security and where does one draw the line between the service provider and the company. Normally it depends on a host of factors like the model of the cloud and the type of SAAS to the type of PAAS installed.

- Companies should learn and gain experience from their internal cloud and the security systems that ...
... were built in order to protect it.

- Most of the organizations have been using the principles of SOA in their application development so there is no reason why it should not be used for cloud because cloud is just an enlarged form of SOA!

- Familiarize and if possible start using modern web security standards like SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language), WS-Security and XACML.

While an organization needs to share large files an important way to secure them would be to setup effective policies for determining authorizations and permissions of individual users. Many of the cloud sharing services do provide these options with additional value added features. There are also options to restrict the user to ‘read only’ which means he can only read the contents of the file but online file sharing or copying or editing are not permitted.

While signing up for an online backup one has to understand the potential implications the remote file servers of the online backups may have on their security especially when these servers are in countries hostile to your own. Backup software should be regularly updated. While using cloud backup ensures that the data is protected by an AES- 256 bit encryption. Choosing companies which have FIPS 140-2 third party certification will provide the highest level of security.

Organizations should also promote file synchronization as this will prevent and inhibit the sharing of files, thus minimizing potential risks. Get easy and swift cloud based solutions and file share right here http://virtualdrive.com/Features/Sharing.aspx