CLOUD STORAGE, DAVENTRY
Cloud storage is an alternative to saving your documents on your PC and one of the benefits of saving your documents to the cloud is if the hard drive on your PC breaks then you have not lost your important businesses documents.
Whatever the size of your business, there is a cloud storage solution that will suit you.
Small businesses may use cloud storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive or iCloud, which all have a certain free storage capacity.
Although the free capacity is unlikely to be sufficient for any businesses needs, all these cloud storage services, do have paid options with storage up to 30TB.
There are benefits to using these services. You can access your documents from anywhere, as they are accessible in the cloud. You can also set the accounts up on multiple devices, including tablets and mobile phones. But there are also downsides, the main one being that two people can open into the same document at the same time and make amendments to it. This may mean that you lose the amendments you have made or have numerous versions of the same document.
These cloud storage options only work effectively if one person has access to them and would be adequate for sole traders or start-up businesses. For most businesses they will have a team of staff so other cloud storage options would be recommended.
Are you file sharing across your internal network?
Some businesses are set up to share their files internally, which does avoid the issue of more than one staff member editing a document that is already open. This option may work but the PC needs to be turned on and OS updates can change the settings. This type of document sharing set up is also not ideal, as hard drive failure may cause you to lose your business documents.
Online File Sharing
Microsoft SharePoint is designed for team collaboration and, if set up correctly, can ensure that only one person can edit a document at a time. There are several packages available, with additional functionality, that can really benefit a small business. Also, as the documents are saved in the cloud, they can be accessed from anywhere.
Cloud Servers
For larger organisations, a Cloud Server is the most cost-effective solution. As unlike an on site server, there are no hardware or maintenance costs.
How safe is cloud storage?
Cloud storage is safer in most instances than the security of your PC. All files are encrypted while in transit, meaning when they upload to the cloud storage service. They are also encrypted within the servers that they are saved in. They have advanced firewalls, intrusion detection, event logging, internal firewalls, and even physical security.
The data centres where the severs are kept have extremely high security processes in place, 24-hour monitoring, fingerprint locks and in some cases, armed guards.
The biggest risk to cloud storage is negligent users, more than 40% of data security breaches occur due to employee error.
What if a cloud server breaks, will I lose my data?
All cloud storage services store and back up the data on several servers, which means if one server has a hardware issue, your data is still safe.
However, no Cloud provider will accept liability for your data meaning you still need to have a backup. Contact us about our Cloud To Cloud backup solutions.
GET IN TOUCH
If you would a free consultation to discuss cloud storage for your business, please call us on 01327 300311 or complete our short contact form.
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