Analyzing Cloud Computer Security

Analyzing Cloud Computer Security

Many lawyers are skeptical about taking their firm business to the cloud amid worries about security and data loss. Before making such a move, lawyers should analyze the security measures the cloud service has intact, as well as any third-party vendors that will have access to data. There are also third-party vendors that should be considered before making the move, to ensure secure backup of all files, documents and sensitive data, as well as making the data more accessible to authorized users such as the lawyer, the lawyer's coworkers and staff, clients, and anyone else that the lawyer authorizes to access data. 

---

Here are a few questions that should be answered before making the move to the cloud:

• Who has access to the cloud service, private files and data, and the servers and what security policies are intact to ensure that no unauthorized users or cloud service employees will be able to access the data?

• How often does the service provide backups of data?

• What encryption methods does the service provide? Is the data encrypted as it's being transferred or only once it has been stored?

• What is the service's guarantee on server uptime? What happens when servers go down?

• If an unexpected event such as a natural disaster were to occur, will all data be lost?

• If a security breach were to occur, would you be notified immediately and how would you be notified?

• If a dispute over billing or other problems were to occur, what happens to your data during this time? Will you still have access to it?

These are all great questions that should be answered. If you cannot get the answers to these questions, or if the answers you do get are not satisfactory, you can look around for another cloud provider, or you can find a third-party service that answers all of these questions.

Third-party vendor to provide continuous, secure backup of all data.

Our favorite solution is cloudHQ. CloudHQ uses a variety of cloud platforms to perform a continuous replication of all data, keeping it synced between the various cloud platforms. They also keep a secure backup of all data on a separate cloud account to ensure that you will have access to your data at all times, even if data was to be accidentally deleted by you or another authorized user, if a hacker accesses your account and maliciously deletes data, or if a server malfunction causes corruption or loss of data, cloudHQ ensures that your data will always be accessible.

For instance- if you use Dropbox, Google Drive and Evernote in your business, and you are working in Google Drive when the servers go down; you can just switch to one of the other cloud platforms and continue your work uninterrupted. This saves time, which can save money. CloudHQ provides a backup of all data on a separate cloud service so even if a hacker accesses your account, gains unauthorized access to your home computer or steals your laptop and deletes all your data, the backup will remain because it is on a separate account with different authentication measures. This ensures that all of your case files, notes, photographs and other important documents will not be lost forever, even if data loss were to occur.

---