Cloud Storage and Its Potential Threats
There are many ways to back up your important and confidential information these days and the best way to accomplish this is called using the Cloud. Or as the introduction commercials back from the early 2000s had them, “to the Cloud”, care of our friends at Microsoft for their Windows 7 launch. It all seems quite futuristic, since this technology allows you to store digital information in a non-physical, but accessible by your workstation location.
But, even something as futuristic as Cloud storage has its potential threats, and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) has labeled their top nine threats for 2013 to showcase this. Their first entry on the threat list is data breaches, especially the use of side-channel timing info to extract individual cryptographic keys. Using this method, the hacker would not only be able to gain that person’s information, but also other clients’ data at the same time.
Second entry is data loss, sometimes caused by a malicious hacker who deletes information out of spite, but this can even come in the form of a no-cost or free cloud provider who denies a user ownership of the information they have stored using the service. This can have a devastating effect as you might stand to lose very important data or personal information can get into the wrong hands.
A third way data loss can occur is if the user who has encrypted their information losses their encryption key, then the data is lost, since no one else can unencrypt it. The next big security risk of cloud computing happens when a hacker hijacks your account or service traffic. With this particular threat, an attacker gains access to your credentials in order to eavesdrop on our online activities while manipulating returns – they can also redirect your clients to fake sites and cause even more damage.
In order to minimize these and other threats, a user who is not looking to master technology, even if just at the moment, might look into the services of MyPCBackup. A relatively recent addition to the Cloud Back up industry, and from an UK company by the same name, it is simple to both install and use. While it boasts unlimited overall storage, there is a ceiling on how much can be uploaded per month.
There is also an unlimited number of licenses to be gained from a single users account, along with allowing back up scheduling, automation, versioning, anytime, anywhere access to files and folders and permits the synchronization of multiple computers. However, the maximum file size that can be uploaded is 3GB for all paid accounts. If you are looking for a basic service that will back up your private and confidential data, this is definitely an option for you to consider.