Reasons Why Your Small Businesses Must Adopt Cloud

 Many of today’s multi billion-dollar companies have started out small. The Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) sector is essential to the health of any nation’s economy. They prove to be the drivers for growth and innovation and offer employment opportunities. We can classify a business as small, medium, or large based on a variety of factors. It may include elements like funding, earnings, personnel, or the size of the business. Indeed, any small business must utilize its limited resources to the fullest in order to succeed.

We keep hearing about ‘The Cloud” day in and day out. The value that cloud solutions add to a business of any size is remarkable. In the case of small businesses, however, these advantages can be overwhelming. So, before we highlight the key benefits of cloud solutions for small businesses, let’s touch on the two main types of deployment infrastructures.

We’ll focus on the benefits cloud technology can bring to small businesses by leveling the playing field for them.

93% of organizations now use cloud technologies in some form or fashion. (Source: TNS)

Significant Benefits of Cloud Solutions for Small Businesses

Here we list the major benefits offered by cloud computing to small businesses.

Improved Data Security

We live in an increasingly interconnected world, which means the threat of cyber security keeps growing at a rapid pace. However, contrary to some common myths, it is essential to understand that using a cloud platform is an exceptionally safe and secure method of storing your business-critical data. As a result, small businesses are relatively more vulnerable to external threats as they need more resources to deal more efficiently with sophisticated attempts to steal data.

These businesses have the resources, technical know-how, and human resources to monitor any attempt at potential intrusions into their systems. In addition, they are consistently developing new encryption solutions and technologies to keep their and clients’ data safe and secure from cybercriminals and hackers.

Small businesses that are taking the services of a cloud provider do not have to worry about security updates, encryption, and monitoring network traffic, as all of these are taken care of by the cloud service provider.

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How to Utilize Cloud Security Measures for Scaling your Business Growth

 While most of the world and businesses have adopted the cloud to ensure ongoing business practices during the pandemic, data security has always been a concern. As a matter of fact, cybersecurity has been a major concern long before the pandemic. To improve and make day-to-day business operations more efficient there are thousands of cloud service providers available in the market. Without a doubt during the difficult times of the year 2020, cloud computing services have been saviors to corporates and startups along with all SMEs.

The concern of data security begins right from an individual level to large multi-national and even global organizations. While the cloud has helped organizations run smoothly and churn income during the pandemic, the safety and security of the essential data have been taken into consideration by the cloud service providers. With cloud security that is designed to protect the data on the cloud along with other applications it also safeguards from threats and cyberattacks. With a combination of services, high-end technologies, and higher control, cloud security ensures the prevention of data loss. Cloud security measures also work on the lines of data privacy regulations and other organizational compliances. Let’s understand more about cloud security measures.

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4 Benefits of Cloud Platform in the Internet of Things

What if I tell you the Internet of Things (IoT) alone does not offer many benefits? Yes, that is true to some extent. IoT is a network of billions of physical devices having processing ability, and are embedded with sensors and software. These devices collect and share a massive amount of data per second over the internet. This raw data when analyzed interprets meaningful information useful for smart decision making.

As per IDC, by 2025 there will be 41.6 billion connected IoT devices that will generate 79.4 zettabytes (ZB) of data. Storing, processing, and managing the flow of such a vast amount of data is a complex task for businesses. In such a case, the Cloud platform acts as a catalyst by providing storage space and cloud computing allows the analysis, processing, and managing of the data enabling IoT systems to work more efficiently.

4 Major Benefits of Cloud Platform in the Internet of Things

Cloud platforms and cloud computing can bring ease to your business operations and drive its growth.  Here are 4 major benefits when you switch to a cloud platform:

Scalability

One of the biggest benefits of deploying IoT systems in a cloud is scalability. Think of a situation where your organization needs to upscale the network infrastructure for IoT deployment. In the case of on-premise network infrastructure, such deployments require purchasing hardware,

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Data Privacy or Data Security: Which One is Important for You?

In recent years, organizations of all sizes have been impacted by data breaches & leaks, which have resulted in significant monetary & non-monetary damages. Business heads, CIOs, and CISOs and their data are always on the brink of a cyber attack since the number of cybercriminals has increased multi-folds. Such data breaches & leaks can cause a significant dent in a brand’s image, resulting in both monetary & non-monetary losses. Data protection and data security are important for safeguarding critical data against these forms of online attacks.

What is Cybersecurity?

Every day a lot of valuable information is uploaded & exchanged over the Internet, exposing their integrity & confidentiality. Cybersecurity includes all the protective measures deployed to secure the digital and web assets against all forms of online threats & human-induced errors. The web assets also need to be secured against privilege escalations and unauthorized users. This is when Information Security comes into the picture, depicting the practices of preventing all unauthorized access, modification, or destruction of information in any form.

Pillars of Information Security

The following pillars of Information Security are also known as the CIA Triad, which has to be addressed for obtaining satisfactory levels of information security.

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Demystifying Data Security for Dummies

One concern that some people who want to undertake cloud computing have data security. While this is a valid concern, it shouldn’t stop you from undertaking cloud computing. Although, in the past, data security was a concern in the cloud computing industry, with new advancements in the field, it’s become a cinch for businesses to handle.

 

Most cloud computing stakeholders agree that data security in the cloud is now considered more advanced and better than that of corporate networks.

Whether or not your data is secure in the cloud is a moot issue. What matters is the cloud computing provider that you are using. Cloud computing providers will implement data protection measures such as the following. They will:

• Allow users to define the permissions attached to their data
• Provide encryption to protect against unauthorized access to stored data
• Offer data protection when it is in transit
• Provide firewalls to protect against outside data attack that are launched against the cloud
• Reinforce servers to protect against every imaginable threat

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Top 4 Security Threats to Disrupt Your Online Presence

In this digital era, businesses have incurred huge losses due to the sophistication of cyber-attacks and a growing number of security breaches. Maintaining pace with the threat landscape is a common pain point the cyber experts are facing. According to a survey, Data breaches exposed 4.1 billion records in the last six months. Website security continues to be a major concern with the rapid growth of businesses relying on IT infrastructure.

Let’s have a look at the security trends ready to disrupt your online presence:

• The Rising Threat of Data Breach

Since the business data has enormous value in the black market, it remains the prime target of hackers. The increasing graph of data breaches has shaken the business world with website security turning out to be a major concern for businesses.  A data breach in your organization will incur a huge loss to your business with the loss of customer loyalty, revenue downfall, and negative brand reputation.

Regular security audits secure your online presence from a data breach. Vulnerability and compliance management will continuously monitor your IT assets to identify gaps and security misconfiguration in your physical and virtual environments. Allowing your security team to understand the security risks of the working environment will help you to proactively mitigate the data breach.

• IoT Vulnerability

Over the years, we have seen mobiles being vulnerable to attacks. In the present scenario, with the increasing proliferation of the Internet of Things, organizations relying on IoT devices are even more at risk. They offer a plethora of potential vulnerabilities like insecure Wi-Fi networks, hard-coded credentials, and unencrypted data. A compromised router serves a platform to launch a massive number of attacks through IoT devices. The organizations automating their processes with the Internet of Things need to secure their web assets. 

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Hacks to Secure Your Data in Cloud

To the digital era, the cloud has proved to be a big blessing. It enables storing of a large amount of information- photos, videos, music, messages, etc. with a limited budget. With the dawn of internet, backing up data became much easier by storing it on the server rather than hard drive. Also, data can be accessed using internet enabled devices. It is fascinating to know that the birth of the internet has made it possible to squirrel away a huge amount of data without buying extra storage devices like memory sticks or hard drives. Recently, with technological advancements, we have seen Google Docs and Gmail taking place of Microsoft Word and Outlook Express. But, the raised concerned is data security in the cloud. Have you ever thought is your data secure on the internet? 

We have seen too many cases of data hacking in the past. In 2011, Sony’s PlayStation Network carried all the news channels by storm for its news of data hacking. A huge amount of user information was compromised. Also, recently in September 2018, we came across news of Facebook security breach exposing more than 50 million user accounts. This was the largest breach in the last 14 years of the company’s history affecting millions of lives by compromising their personal information. 

Though hacking is considered to be highly illegal there are different hacking groups targeting businesses, national security and also, private information. The user information like usernames, passwords, home address and also, credit card information encourages the hackers by enabling easy access to boatloads of personal information. Passwords are a way to safeguard your information from the prying eyes. But, let’s be honest that we prefer simple passwords which are easier to memorize. But, these passwords can be easily guessed by the hackers and your personal information can be at risk. We keep on blaming the security systems for poor security and the hackers for the malicious attacks. But, it is a fact that the users are also at fault in these attacks. 

Here are a few tips to help you secure your data on the cloud 

1. Don’t Reuse or Share Passwords

It is really bad to use simple passwords as the hackers can easily guess them and breach into your account. Once, the hacker gets access to your email account he can easily breach into your other web logins since the passwords are mailed to your email accounts. Your information networking sites like Facebook, Instagram, banking, etc. will be compromised. The hacker can also change the passwords restricting your access to the accounts. So, it is a piece of advice to use passwords that are hard to break and difficult to guess. You can use a combination of capital and small characters, numbers, symbols to secure your data. 

The second suggestion is never to use the same passwords for different sites. If you wish to reuse the password across multiple sites change up letters, capitalization and symbols. You need to be sure that you don’t repeat the password across different sites which carry your banking details like credit card information or social security number. Out of all, your email account password is the most important so don’t repeat it for any site. 

Lastly, never share your passwords with anyone may it be friends or family members. The number of people who know your passwords is directly proportional to the possibility of your passwords being compromised. Following these password rules will make your online life more secure. 

2. Data Backup 

It is beneficial to take backup of your data to be on a safer side. The unexpected accidents like system failure, robbery, power surge and faulty hard drive may take place when they are least expected. Years ago, data backup was an expensive task but, cloud storage brings a cost-effective and better solution. Cloud storage is available in all sizes and shapes. 

The smartest way to backup data is storing all the files on the cloud instead of depending on a single device. It is highly important to locally backup data on a secondary device or automated backup drive with hard to crack passwords. 

There are many organisations offering cloud storage services to set up some cloud accounts for storage purpose. 

3. Password Manager

Password manager allows you to lock all your unique passwords behind one master password. In other words, it allows you to create separate logins for different accounts like Facebook, Twitter and cloud storage but, you can access them memorizing the single password. Last Pass, KeePass, etc. are the online password management utilities available in the market. 

These online utilities are also capable of creating random passwords that are impossible. These utilities synchronize the information across multiple web browsers and devices thus, enabling to fill the forms with just a click. 

4. Data Encryption 

Data encryption is an excellent practice to encrypt data before uploading it to the cloud. This can be a better precaution against the malicious attacks from hackers. Using local encryption as an additional layer of security will help you protect your information from the service providers and administrators. While selecting a service provider make sure you choose the one that provides data encryption facility. 

5. Avoid Storing Sensitive Information

There is a huge number of enterprises that avoid storing confidential or sensitive information on their servers. This is because saving such confidential information can be a risk to the organizations. Hackers are always ready to target the firm’s sensitive information, securing which is of utmost importance to the enterprises. Compromising this information can cause gruesome troubles and losses to the firm. 

Also, uploading sensitive data on the cloud is risky for customers too. It is your responsibility to make sure to keep your personal information out of this virtual world to protect it from hackers. So, it is an appropriate solution to avoid storing such information on the cloud. 

6. Be Aware of Your Online Behavior 

Your online behavior is sometimes responsible for the security of your data on the cloud. It is good advice about not saving passwords while using public desktops. Also, make sure you logged out once you are done using the public computer. If these rules are not followed, your data may be compromised by the strangers accessing it. 

Hackers target you by sending spam emails that are worth not opening. Similarly, while making online payments and shopping make sure you research everything you need to know and it is not a fraudulent site. 

Also, connecting to open Wi-Fi hotspots in public places to access the data in the cloud may be a high risk. These public connections are unencrypted which means the hacker can intrude your data on the same network. He may get access to your confidential information like login credentials. Smart browsing can help you secure your data in the cloud. 

Conclusion

Despite, Cloud Computing having several benefits the major concern is data security in the cloud. The rise of the internet has given birth to hackers who are capable of breaking the security. You can prevent the hackers from entering your cloud security system by following the above techniques. Data encryption, avoid reusing passwords and all others mentioned in the blog are a few hacks that need to be implemented to safeguard your privacy from hackers.