To say that we live in times where data security has become a worrisome part of our online presence – whether you are an individual or large corporation – would be a huge understatement. The safety of people’s privacy and their financial security is being threatened by individual hackers looking to make easy money, organizations supporting one ideal or another, governments looking to “protect” us and “rogue states” looking to do us harm.

For a business that decides to take all its data and applications and trust it all to a third party, as is the case in cloud computing, it takes nerves of steel and requires that a solid rebound plan be put in place. Business managers and system administrators alike should be aware of the risks that exist, how to minimize them and how to recover from them should there be a breach or total failure.

So, what are the safety concerns that need to be addressed in cloud computing and hosting of data? Let’s take a look at a few of them:

1. Entrusting Data to a Third Party: cloud hosting basically means that a business hands the responsibility of its data to a cloud hosting provider. The provider is privy to all the information and the goings-on of its clients’ affairs. This, in turn, means clients are at the mercy of the providers’ discretion and their ability to keep the information they have been entrusted with as safe and secure as possible.

Businesses should make sure who they are dealing with when moving their data to a cloud hosting provider. Even when the provider has a sterling reputation, a watertight non-disclosure agreement should be signed to serve as further insurance. Also, whenever possible sensitive data should be held within the confines of the business’ own networks.

2. Integration and Operation Issues: accessing data from the cloud, or serving clients with information that is hosted on a cloud server, comes with its own issues and requirements. Not knowing how to handle handshakes with servers thus causing dropped data, inefficient use of resources resulting in data leaks or less-than-optimal performance of resources could be the cause of headaches for the business as well as its clients. No amount of secondary protection measures (firewalls, anti-malware etc.) will help if the data is being pushed out or lost from the improper configuration.

Preliminary studies should be carefully done and plans for migration and testing for efficiency should be carried out before any moves are done. With the number of cloud hosting providers out there cutting corners or making sacrifices for the sake of a host shouldn’t even be considered – everything should work as expected or it’s on to the next candidate.

3. Encryption and Decryption of Data: a good way to protect data from being read is to have it encrypted. Although it could be a little resource-intensive, it becomes worth it if the final goal (to ensure that the data should not be accessed by anyone but the business itself) is achieved. The encryption and decryption process could burden data transmission and access speeds, but if it means that clients’ personal and financial information is kept safe it is well worth it.

Businesses should look into encrypting their data – at all costs – and then see how to make its delivery as efficient as possible.

4. Effective Disaster Recovery: a good sign a business can be trusted is not only in that it can keep data safe (which has become almost impossible with today’s hackers taking shots at any server), but by how fast it can plug the leak, recover lost data and get everything back up and running again. With cloud computing, the bulk of data is kept with the hosting provider. Businesses should hold on to integral and key data that they need to get back up and running in a safe and separate place – its own servers or other third-party secure storages can do trick.

Disaster recovery shouldn’t just be the responsibility of the hosting provider but also that of the business itself too. Careful planning needs to be done on what data should never be lost, at any cost, and then a way sought for protecting it with many “lines of defense,” including arrays of firewalls, encryption, data replication, separate backup storage sites and downloading and keeping of data on various storage devices (magnetic tapes, DVDs etc.).

5. Role Assignments and Monitoring of Accounts: contrary to popular belief, a majority of security breaches are caused by people from within a company and behind their firewalls. Therefore, having all the security put in place on the cloud hosting provider’s side and then letting anyone from within the company access it all, or assigning roles willy-nilly without any monitoring or restriction, is a recipe for certain disaster.

Accidents happen and employees could cause security breaches without intending to. Therefore, all accounts should be logged and only granted the access that is required to perform specific tasks and nothing more. Whenever an employee leaves the business, their accounts should be deleted without delay. Regular monitoring of passwords and audits of access and usage should be the norm.

Of course, as technology changes from day to day, rules, checks & balances and measures should be adapted and policies should change accordingly. There will never be a set of rules that can ensure 100% safety – that is a 100% surety.