Do You Have Faith in the Cloud?

Online ‘cloud’ storage has suffered something of a PR nightmare in recent weeks. Hackers have gained access to a number of celebrities iCloud accounts and leaked a number of their private images online, more claim to have obtained the login details for over six million people’s Dropbox accounts and, as ever, there is the persistent fear that ‘big brother’ may be watching and checking every byte of data we store with these services.

Nevertheless, it was not until this weekend, when a friend informed me that he ‘didn’t trust the cloud’ that it occurred to me that the public’s faith in online storage systems and/or companies could have diminished significantly. Yes, I expected a niche to have rejected cloud storage already but they made their minds up several months ago following the actions of NSA and various other security organisations having been revealed. I genuinely thought that, whilst online storage may have taken some flak, it was the most prominent, public and recognisable brands that had been involved in recent scandals – such as Apple and the aforementioned Dropbox – that would have taken the brunt of the pummelling.

Intrigued by this, I took the question to social media and have been surprised to discover that many people felt a lot less comfortable about storing any kind of data online let alone data that could be exploited and truly considered sensitive. These people were not ‘techies’ or even individuals who would describe as being particularly technologically-astute, rather they were people who, like the vast majority of us, use the internet, smartphones, and therefore services such as iCloud, on a daily basis.

Perhaps this just goes to show that we’re all beginning to take the security of our data that little bit more seriously!

Microsoft Named Least Trusted Data Storage Provider

If you use the cloud to store any kind of data then it’s likely that, following revelations concerning the National Security Agency’s surveillance of electronic information having come to light, that you’re concerned about the security of this data and of your personal privacy potentially being invaded.

Following on from this, a recent survey has revealed that, of all companies offering online storage, Microsoft is the least trusted. Of the hundreds of IT and technology professionals questioned as part of the survey, almost a third (32 per cent) stated that Microsoft was the brand they trusted the least with regards to the security of their sensitive data. In comparison, 22 per cent stated that they did trust Apple’s iCloud services and 7 per cent felt that they did not feel that Dropbox provided a secure means of storing data online.

This is bad news for the tech giant as it comes on the heels of it having been revealed that they have just invested over $1 billion in a new data centre to be based in Iowa.

The US-based company have attempted to address such concerns previously by allowing customers located outside of America to choose within which country their data would be stored from January of this year. At the time of writing, however, customers based in the US are not afforded such a choice.

Following the findings of this survey having been revealed, commentators are suggesting that Microsoft and other data storage providers will start offering such options to their American customers. Others have gone as far as to suggest that many will opt to store their data in Swiss-based data centres in order to provide their clients with as much assurance as possible with regards to the security and privacy of their data.

What do you think? Are you concerned about the security of data stored in the cloud? Share your thoughts by leaving a comment.