Business Cloud Storage Dos and Don’ts

Cloud tools are attractive to businesses for many reasons. They allow for easy sharing and syncing of data, are easy to use, and are relatively inexpensive when compared to the costs of housing and maintaining an internal server setup. However, without taking the proper precautions, your business and employees can misuse your cloud storage tools without even realizing it, or when it’s too late.

Follow the dos and don’ts below to ensure your business is safely and effectively using business cloud storage, before your data is lost, hacked, or worse:

Don’t:

• Treat cloud storage as cloud backup – Storing copies of your data in cloud storage is different than backing your data up to the cloud. Know the differences so you’re sure your data is safe. Cloud backup is designed to automatically and continuously store all of your business data so you can easily restore files at anytime. Cloud storage is intended to store some of your files so that they’re available for sharing and syncing.

• Store all of your data in cloud storage – cloud storage can get expensive, especially when you want to store multiple versions or histories of documents and files in the cloud. Cloud storage can be helpful when sharing and syncing data, but be sure you have a reliable storage and backup plan for the remainder of your business’s data.
• Share data with unauthorized users – cloud storage is designed to make sharing easy. This can be a blessing and a curse, depending on how careful you are. Make sure that you and all employees within your organization share carefully to avoid unpermitted access to documents and data.

• Store all of your data in one place – if you’re relying on cloud storage to store a subset of your business data, you should have a storage plan for the rest of your data as well. Storing all of your business’s data on one, or multiple devices, kept in one location is a recipe for disaster. Theft and even natural disasters like flood, fire, and lighting can easily and quickly compromise your data and lead to massive data loss — this potential is even higher when all of your data is stored in the same location. In that case, what happens to one device could happen to all of your devices — leaving you completely unable to recover any of your important files.

• Rely on physical device storage alone – physical device storage is vulnerable by nature. Physical devices, like NAS devices, hard drives, servers, flash drives, and other storage devices are physical and therefore vulnerable to natural disasters, theft, hardware malfunction, device failure and more. If you have business data on these devices, even if it is stored in the cloud, be sure to back it up to a secondary location in the cloud.

• Store cardholder data – unless it’s absolutely necessary, you can limit your liability for data breaches by opting against storing your customer’s payment information. If you use a cloud storage system to store permitted cardholder data, make sure that this data is encrypted so it cannot be viewed or accessed by malicious or unauthorized users.

• Let excessive data deplete your storage space – keeping too much data stored on the devices you work on daily can quickly deplete your available storage space and slow down your operating systems. This can often occur when your cloud storage syncs files to your computer as well. Move any and all eligible data into a storage archive, where you can access it when you need to and keep it tucked away when you don’t.

Do:

• Have multiple backups of your data – ideally, your data backup plan should include backing up your data to multiple locations. This looks different for every business. Some businesses will keep backups stored on-site within physical device storage, in addition to having a complete backup in the cloud. Other businesses will rely on cloud backup entirely, with a provider who backs their data up to multiple locations and offers unlimited previous file versions of their data that they can revert to at any time.

• Backup to the cloud – cloud backup is the only foolproof way to protect data from loss and deletion. It trumps physical device storage, has all of the protections required to prevent unauthorized backup access, should be used to backup all data within your cloud storage environment to eliminate data loss tied to sharing and syncing errors, and can be relied on to retrieve and restore data to any old (or new) device.

• Encrypt all stored data – data breaches are an issue for large companies with massive amounts of data to lose, and for small to medium size companies as their limited security defenses make them easy targets. Encrypt any data you put into storage. If you’re backing up to the cloud, make sure your provider backs up your data in-transit to the cloud so data cannot be captured by those with malicious intent during this, otherwise vulnerable, stage.

• Keep data stored away securely – Take precautions to minimize the potential for theft. Whether you have your own server network or you’re leasing storage space from a cloud backup provider, make sure there are access controls in place to keep data out of the wrong hands. Locked rooms, locked server cabinets, fingerprint entry, cameras, armed security and other similar security measures should be put in place to keep your sensitive data secure and uncompromised.

• Backup all devices with important data – in many businesses, data is spread across multiple devices. Do a check of each of the places your business’s data lives and backup each of those devices — this includes NAS devices, laptops, desktops, hard drives, servers and more.

• Test-drive your backup partner before you commit – the long list of cloud backup providers, makes them easy to find but difficult to choose between. Before you commit to any cloud backup provider, create your checklist of must have features to help you pick your top companies, then start a free trial before you commit to any one provider.

Whether you’re currently using cloud storage or you’re getting set up for the first time, ensure that cloud backup is part of your overall data storage and protection plan. Cloud storage file syncing and sharing errors happen, and they can lead to data loss when they do. Whether an employee deletes a shared file, or a permanent change is made to a document and detected too late. Additionally, depending on the types of data you’re storing, cloud storage may not provide you with the advanced encryption and security provisions required to ensure this confidential data is kept out of the wrong hands.

For a cloud backup partner that will keep your data encrypted, safe and retrievable at all times, try Nordic Backup free for 30 days. Nordic Backup comes equipped with:

• Unlimited device backup and redundant local backups
• Affordable, scalable cloud storage
• Military grade 256-bit encryption prior to backup
• Automatic, continuous backup of new and changed files
• Unlimited previous file version history retention lengths
• Fast disaster recovery options with reliable support
• And more

Click here to start your 30 day free trial of Nordic Backup before you commit.