The Cloud - A Great Marketing Term

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The Cloud - A Great Marketing Term
1888PressRelease - The Cloud is great marketing
for service providers that store
personal/business data in warehouses filled with
servers. Factors to consider without the
hype. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK It seems like an
everyday event, personal information being hacked
online, but why now, when we are so protected?
Well, let's discuss these never ending real life
disasters and maybe the answers are just common
sense. First, the CLOUD is big business, very
profitable like cable television and cell phone
services so it attracts huge capital investment,
government support and marketing promotion.
Portrayed as a simple and secure method to store
your personal data, available to you any time and
place. Yes, technically these services make
data storage simple and available, but having a
large volume of data in one place also attracts
hackers who consider the cloud a target of
opportunity. History repeats itself once again
and tragic lessons are learned, bandits usually
strike at the point of greatest reward, in this
case, server farms (the cloud) that house tens of
millions of private data records. For hackers
this is "the pot of gold at the end of the
rainbow". The news that another cloud provider
has been hacked is becoming routine, but with
minimal publicity.
The cloud is also a jackpot for the NSA, IRS and
other government agencies that can gain legal
access to private information without your
consent. Cost of cloud entry is another
enticement, for as low as 5 a month you can be
lifted into the cloud to store your life and
everything of value. Remember the cloud is a
"service" and by definition therefore is a never
ending expense. Similar to what we've experienced
with cable TV and cell phone service providers,
this is another big business, offered by huge
companies that result in ever increasing charges,
and don't forget those government fees are sure
to follow.
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"THE CLOUD" what great a marketing term, it's
sexy, technical, trendy, a mysterious term for a
lot of servers in a warehouse that can be
accessed by you, your family, friends and others
legally or illegally. This truly is, great
marketing! What happens when there is a known
data loss or breach, do you get a refund, legal
assistance or will the professionals explain how
it's your fault for not changing you passwords on
a regular basis and so on? Ever ask how you get
your data back if your computer crashes, what it
costs and how long it takes? Again, what great
marketing! Very few people know or even ask, "How
do I get my data back from the cloud" they just
assume it will magically reappear! Reality is it
could take weeks and cost hundreds of dollars and
the faster you need it, the more it
cost. STAYING OFF THE GRID- A LOGICAL
ALTERNATIVE If you're off the grid, common-sense
says "you're probably a less rewarding target".
Logic says "the cloud is a bigger target with
bigger rewards and thus has a greater public
impact". Hackers love the media
attention. Remember, government agencies can
access your cloud account legally without your
consent or knowledge! Why expose yourself to
unnecessary intrusions. An alternative to the
cloud is local backup it's simple, fast, secure
and a cost effective storage method for keeping
private what is important to you. An external
backup device not connected to the internet and
in your physical possession obviously is less
vulnerable to online internet hackers or
unauthorized individuals.
PERSONAL CONTROL OF PRIVATE DATA Personal control
of your data stored in the cloud has limits. Do
you have a clear understanding of the
circumstance where unknown individuals may have
access to your data, will you be notified when
government agencies or unauthorized individuals
gain access, and will the cloud service accept
liability for these activities? Personal backup
solutions inherently provide more security, less
exposure to internet influences and provide more
control and visibility over unauthorized access.
In addition, you personally know where your data
is stored.
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Do large corporations store their information in
the CLOUD? No Way! PROFORMANCE Performing a
simple data restore in a timely basis is another
key benefit of a personal backup device. Often
this process is not addressed until a disaster
occurs and performing a complete system restore
from the cloud is not a practical. Data transfer
rates from the cloud are limited, so typically
service providers must physically mail data back
to you. Note they return data only, not your
operating system or application software. There
are many personal backup and recovery solutions
offered, ranging from data only solutions
(offered by most hard drive manufactures) to
image backup programs (offered by software
developers) to high end zero down time solutions
that allow a failed computer to be automatically
restarted and operated from the backup device
until it is convenient to perform a system
repair. This can't be found in the
clouds! COST Another consideration is the
initial upfront one-time cost of personal backup
solution vs. perpetual cloud service fees.
Personal backup solutions range from 70 to 200
depending on feature-set and will typically last
5-10 years. Cloud services like other services
are charged on a monthly or yearly basis for the
life of the service and data recovery services
are additional and charged separately. IN
CONCLUSION Give careful consideration to
liabilities, costs, performance and control
issues associated with the mystical cloud before
storing private data in an outsourced server farm
located somewhere, with invisible management.
Latest figures show that there are about 2500
cloud service providers that outsource to server
farms around the world (such as Google,
Microsoft, Amazon, Apple to name a few).
Then ask yourself, who's responsible? For more
information on local backup and security
solutions go to http//www.cmsproducts.com or
www.cesecure.com