By François Morel, EVault’s Director of Sales, EMEA
As businesses increasingly consider moving data to the cloud, they would be well advised to consider these suggestions in their decision making process…
Consider platforms encompassing all your needs
There are myriad cloud-based datacenters but while some provide more storage space than average on-site datacenters, they may not cover all your needs. Security is key, but there are a few basic questions you must answer before securing your cloud-based datacenter. Before deciding on one that looks good on paper, you should also confirm:
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Do you need to ensure regular backup testing?
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Do you want all your data to be recovered in less than 4 hours each time your system administrator needs to get some maintenance done?
Ensure datacenter agility
Datacenters aren’t set in stone but some will need more time with a system administrator before they work the way you need. Developers may be used to the agile method but all operations need to be able to react quickly and use tools that can fit their needs, even when these change over time.
Although cloud-based datacenters are intrinsically more flexible than on-site architectures, they’re not all the same. A genuinely agile environment will obviously cover your basic needs in terms of uptime and storage. It should also provide a multi-layered storage facility to ensure the data stored is safe in case of a disaster.
Provide appropriate access for each employee
The French believe storing data in a secure way is the most important attribute of a cloud-based provision. This is supported by 59% of respondents in EVault’s Second Annual Cloud-Connected Backup and Recovery Survey. The easiest way to ensure data is safe is by providing access to the datacenter’s administration functions to only necessary individuals within the company. The vertical industries involved in our survey agree that, for instance, Financial Service teams have greater access to the company’s information (74% of French respondents). Respondents also supported access from HR, legal and operations teams, as well.
Further consideration should be made by administrators about endpoint devices that may connect to the datacenter. Though any related policies must be agreed upon in concert by the personnel and the IT department, having an endpoint protection system will provide better safety to the data in case mobile devices are stolen or lost, as those systems enable remote control of the device by an authorized third party.
Use multi-layered storage facilities
The data of some services is more critical to the business, and this should be stored in the topmost layer in case a disaster occurs. Doing this will ensure that critical data can be recovered right away in order to avoid any disruption in the operations of the organization.
Departments storing public information should be provided with less critical storage space. However, their data still needs to be stored in a secure environment. A proper Cloud Disaster Recovery service will ensure all the data of a company can be easily recovered by the authorized personnel.
Encrypt all the critical data that transits through your network
It may sound like a no-brainer but most people in businesses forget that all the information that goes on the Internet is not encrypted. Emails use the most transparent network when sent over the Internet and company networks are not always entirely encrypted.
As a growing amount of company assets are scattered all over the world, critical data needs to transit on an encrypted network. More importantly, it needs to be stored in an encrypted facility, just like money saved in a vault at the bank. Encryption algorithms like the Advanced Encryption Standard are notoriously hard to decipher and guarantee the data can’t be accessed by third-party devices.
Going back to those survey results one last time I was interesting to learn that 42% of French CIOs declared that securely saving data is likely to keep them awake at night. By considering these guidelines I’m guessing they will sleep more soundly.
