Moving or even copying your business data into the cloud seems like a risky proposition. It can be, but too often, companies don’t make an informed decision and thus lose many advantages.
By Heinrich Swanepoel, head of growth at PaySpace
This situation is especially relevant when using cloud platforms that will cost considerably less while delivering greater access and productivity.
Using a reputable provider makes your data safe in the cloud. The easiest way to understand this is to take a holiday …
Holidays and visitors
Picture that you are going away. You need someone to turn on lights, water the plants and feed the pets daily. You get a live-in housesitter: this is your security measure to protect your stuff.
Now, let’s say dozens of your relatives are planning a party and need things from your kitchen while you are away. You give them each a key so they can help themselves.
Your housesitter must monitor who has keys, when they show up and what stuff they access. You’ll need to provide lists and pictures, so the housesitter ensures someone didn’t steal a key or take what they don’t need. But you don’t want to block your relatives.
You’re going to need more than one housesitter. You may even need to put different locks on your kitchen cupboards. It’s starting to become very convoluted and expensive.
Suppose, though, you live in a very nice gated estate. You hire a housesitter, but you also have access to the estate security equipped (and financially invested) to handle access requests of many houses. Rather than run everything yourself, you can lean on them, which costs much less than if you built an equivalent security apparatus just for your house. Even better, they have a guarded warehouse where you can put all the kitchen items your relatives want to use.
Which scenario poses a more significant risk that someone steals a key and robs your home?
Data in the cloud is safe, affordable and productive
Your house is your business, and your kitchen items are your data. The housesitter represents your IT and security teams. The relatives are your employees and partners; the party is an important business task or project. The gated community is the cloud platform, and the warehouse is the cloud. If you ask me where your risks are lower, it’s with the gated community and guarded warehouse.
The cloud isn’t an infallible system. You are still responsible for giving keys to different people, and your housesitter must pay attention. But at least the estate security service is trained and vigilant to spot problems. It’s also much easier for the right relatives (employees) to get what they need (data), so they can plan that party (project) without ruining your holiday (productivity).
Is your data safe in the cloud? Almost certainly, providing you use a reputable cloud platform provider with good governance, a demonstrable track record, compliance to laws such as POPIA and GDPR, and qualifications including ISO27001 certification.
The platform is the gated estate, using its training to keep your data safe and scale to invest economically in security measures. They control the warehouse or use a warehouse from a prominent provider such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, which spends even more on security.
Bad things can still happen, but the risk is considerably less, while the added benefits deliver giant leaps in performance. You still need to manage access and inventory, but you have added layers of protection while boosting productivity. When done right with the right partner, the cloud is a safe place for your data, a massive boost for delivery, and much kinder to your budget.