As the popularity of cloud storage increases, small and big businesses alike have adopted it in their workings. In addition to meeting the storage needs of a company, cloud storage solution is much cheaper as compared to other kinds of storage services available in the market. Owing to the high demand and popularity of cloud storage many IT companies in Virginia are offering affordable and easy cloud services that can be accessed remotely too.

Like any other technology, cloud storage has security concerns and risks. Here the top few security risks.

BYOD

The work culture of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is both advantageous and disadvantageous for the businesses. With more and more companies allowing employees to use their own device at the office, businesses are saving on the expense of investing in IT infrastructures. But this has also raised a significant security concern for the businesses. If these devices are ill-managed, chances are they can be hacked, stolen or lost. Situations like these make a business network highly accessible and vulnerable to breach. Without a proper tool in place, this type of data breach is difficult to discover and fix.

SNOOPING

If there are no security measures in place, data and files in the cloud can easily get hacked. The significant risk factor is that the files get stored over the internet. No matter if you have encrypted the files; there are chances that the data will get hacked en route to the receiver. IT companies providing small business IT support services suggest transferring encrypted files through a secured connection to ensure its security. By doing so, you can prevent hackers from accessing your cloud’s metadata.

KEY MANAGEMENT

Cryptographic key management had always been a significant concern for business, but with the advent of cloud services, there has been an increased need to manage it more effectively. The best way to ensure that information that goes in the cloud isn’t vulnerable to risks is to secure the key management process and automate it. To make sure that no one accesses the data without permission, the key must be jointly-secured, and the key retrieval process in place should be complicated.

NO CONTROL OVER DATA

As more and more businesses are using Google Drive, Microsoft Azure and other such cloud services as a platform to store their data, there are chances that they may lose the control of their sensitive data. Most often when using third-party data sharing services, the files and data are moved from the business’s IT infrastructure. It takes the privacy settings of the data out of the control of the business. By encrypting the files while storing it on the cloud and transferring it, a company can avoid this risk.

DATA LEAKAGE

Data leakage is the topmost reason why most businesses refrain from using cloud storage services. Since the cloud is a multiple user environment and a third-party service, the data is susceptible to be opened and viewed by the service provider. When it comes to business, we often tend to doubt the capability of a third-party service provider which presents even more significant data risk. Some other ways a data on the cloud can leak are the compromise of the user account or hacking of the provider. Besides having faith in your cloud service provider, make sure that you use proper file encryption and passwords to secure your data.