One of the primary uses for Cloud computing has always been to provide a safer alternative to local data. But there’s obviously still a lot of debate on this issue, with many points being made on either side. In the end you’ll have to decide for yourself which one is more secure.
Overview
On the surface, it might seem obvious that cloud services keep your data safer than local data. After all, storing data locally has all sorts of security and backup risks. This is the case even more so if you store files on a portable device, especially if it was issued to you by a company. Companies will often have sensitive information given to employees that they access using their own device. So obviously, if employers want to allow employees to use their own advices in the first place, security can be a problem because it’s not like they can individually verify the security of each individual advice. However, if the cloud is used instead, then the files can be kept secure through a login. That’s the idea anyway. The problem is that this isn’t the way this always works out.
NSA Scandal
Recently, it came out that the NSA might be spying on the personal files of people who had stored information on various cloud based services. In particular, the claim was made that the NSA was spying on Google data centers. AS you can imagine, a whole lot of information passes through the cloud on Google, including a lot of personal information. So if the NSA was able to get access to this information, the question is what couldn’t they get access to if they really needed it. The claim on behalf of the NSA is that they don’t just go through this data directly, and instead that they always need a court order.
Controversy
Obviously, claims that the NSA always goes straight through court order whenever they need to go through data for the sake of national security have been challenged. Some people wonder whether this is even true, and others wonder whether it matters, since the courts could just be rubber stamping the NSA’s requests, making it so that they essentially have access to everything anyway. This obviously brings up questions regarding how people can keep their information safe on the cloud. It really makes you wonder whether safety is a thing that can exist. Fortunately, many different solutions have been proposed.
Privacy Law
An example of proposed solutions include laws like the legislation the U.S. Senate Intelligence committee are working on to create tighter controls about what the government can do and what they can’t in terms of looking through people’s private data. It’s not like this is the first law to deal with such privacy concerns though. Another such law is the HIPAA law. This law concerns privacy in terms of health insurance providers. This is why solutions regarding privacy may need to be handled on an individual basis for each separate cloud provider.
Safe Providers
One way to make sure your data is safe is to go with Hipaa cloud services. Some services pledge to be compliant with Hipaa legislation. You can really get some good information about how secure each service is by looking at which services are sticking to laws like Hipaa and which aren’t doing this at all. It’s a good short hand for making sure that your information is safe. After all, it’s dangerous to put out personal information like your name, address, social security number and so on without being absolutely sure no one can access it but you.