Is the Cloud More or Less Secure Than My Network?
All the buzz surrounding the cloud creates a misconception that cloud security is a brand new challenge whose risks have not been addressed. While the cloud is bringing radical changes in cost, scalability, and deployment time, and the Internet is a large attack vector, the cloud is based on industry best practices in security and data protection. Most data breaches today are not of cloud security systems, but of physical devices such as laptops being lost, stolen, or compromised. In fact, many experts believe that cloud solutions, especially public clouds, are more secure than on-premise infrastructure.
Questions to Ask Your Cloud Vendor About Security:
Many cloud vendors leverage best-in-class security practices across their infrastructure, applications, and services. What’s more, cloud solutions provide the same industry-leading security for all of their users, which often gives you a level of security your own organization could not afford to implement or maintain. When evaluating cloud vendors, here are some key questions you should ask about security:
- How does the vendor plan on securing your data and segregating the data from that of other customers?
- How and where is the data encrypted, and it is encrypted both in motion and at rest?
- What key management policies does the vendor employ?
- What access controls does the vendor enforce in the application as well as in their physical datacenters?
- What third-party groups audit the vendor’s security? What compliance or other certifications, such as the new SSAE 16 certification, does the vendor possess?
- How will you get your data safely out of the vendor’s cloud? Does the vendor build redundancy and disaster recovery into its solution?
- Does the vendor use secure development principles when building the application or service?
- Is there another vendor’s cloud platform behind their application, and what is the security of that platform? (For example, many data backup providers use Amazon or LiveDrive for their infrastructure.)
A great resource is the Cloud Security Alliance, which offers certification programs, training materials, and resources about all areas of cloud security.
Symform Brings Revolutionary Security to the Cloud
Unlike traditional cloud solutions that rely on large, centralized datacenters, Symform is a decentralized, secure global cloud network. This means your data does not sit in a centralized datacenter with a single point of failure and a single point of attack. All data is encrypted using military-grade, AES-256 encoding before leaving your computer, and is then shredded into 96 small pieces, which are then distributed across 96 points on the global network.
Data redundancy is automatically built in for data protection, and by globally distributing the data fragments we achieve superior protection against regional disasters. All of this happens behind the scenes, so you never have to worry about how safe your files are in the Symform cloud, and you can always get them back when you need it.
