The cloud can be a blessing for small business owners battling through tough economic times. Instead of purchasing costly enterprise software, business owners can save their dollars by accessing powerful computing programs in the cloud, from high-end word processors and project-management tools to spreadsheets and Photoshop alternatives. But, the cloud isn’t perfect, especially when it comes to security issues. Business owners must be conscious that their documents, presentations, and marketing materials can be damaged when they are stored in the cloud.
Password issues
One of the biggest security issues when dealing with the cloud is password protection. This is also one of the primary security issues outside of the cloud.
Selecting a hard to guess password for data and information in the cloud is an easy way for business owners to safeguard themselves. Creating a password that has both numbers and letters, and if possible, special characters. Another consideration for business owners is who needs to have access to these passwords. The more people that have access to passwords the more at risk the data is.
Hacker alert
Hackers, malware, and spyware remain serious issues for cloud environments, just as they are problems that business owners face when logging onto their personal computers everyday. What makes this especially scary is that individual business owners have little control over how secure cloud services are. The big names — companies like Microsoft and Google — must supply their own security for the information that business owners store in the cloud.
Common sense protection
Protecting yourself from theft in the cloud can be as simple as applying some common sense practices.
First, owners should think about what type of information they’re storing in the cloud. The most sensitive data, data that could damage a business if it is lost or stolen, may not be suitable for cloud storage. Instead, this data might be better stored on a business owner’s individual computing system and dependably backed up.
Secondly, business owners must remain cautious about who they allow access to their cloud-stored data, documents, and reports. Owners are mindful about whom they allow to access the files on their desktops and laptops and they should be equally careful when it comes to granting others access to their cloud-hosted information.
