Cloud Computing: security and new ideas to make us feel safer.
Cloud Computing has grown for the past few years and now it is part of our lives. In simplest terms, cloud computing is saving data, programs and so on in a place that is not your computer hard drive, but you still have easy access to it.
There are several pros about Cloud computing. However, just to quote a few, cloud has reduced costs and optimized operations. Additionally, It has advanced and changed the way people store data.
Although, Cloud is well-known nowadays, stills a frightening choice for lots of users when related to security. Without developing proper security, which is the first concern among users, all the effort towards developing this revolutionary technology could just fail.
Cloud computing provides easy approach to data, but one of the biggest problems is how to make only allowed people access its contents. When we join a cloud service, we trust on a company to secure our data. But a common question among users is: how to prevent our storage from being safe when it comes to hackers?
As it been said in Readwrite website, hackers have developed their skills in a way that puts in risk everything that is connected to the Internet: “Hackers have a growing and constantly evolving arsenal of attack methods, putting everyone with a connection to the Internet at risk. Everyone has something that hackers are interested in, whether bank account information, personal identification or credentials into corporate email accounts.”
For this reason, I believe that using a service in a famous and well-know company is good because it will make you feel more confident and rely on them when storing your data. On the other hand, a famous company can attracts more attention of the hackers. So, what could be a good solution for that?
There is a new company, named Lima, which thought about this issues and created a solution for it. A product that is your personal cloud. No needing to have a company managing your data for you. Basically, you will connect the Lima product to a router that will also be connected to an external hard drive. This hard drive will appear as if you had it connected to your computer and other devices. Thus, the only thing to do is send the data you want to storage in Lima device and accesses from any device you want.
This way, your files will be safe at home and still reachable from any place you’re at. However, hackers could still find a way to gain access in to your data because your device is connected to the Internet, it is unlikely for them to be aware of a small private data saving if you compared to a huge company, that attracts a lot of attention and has a lot of data saving from all its costumers.
(If you would like to know more about Lima here is the link to their video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNQmW_svZwI ).
3 comments on “Cloud Computing: security and new ideas to make us feel safer.”
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Thank you Carolina for this article.
There is only one thing that I disagree with. The Lima product that you talked about could be very vulnerable because it will use wifi connections. One of the biggest problems would be that if you can access your data from anywhere that means that you would be using a different wifi connection and that way a hacker could easily gain access to the net and steal or manipulate your information. (http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/data-and-telecom/the-deep-vulnerability-of-wi-fi-networks.html)
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I do enjoy the concept of using Lima rather than a large companies cloud system as a way to evade potential hackers. However, under the reviews of this product there is a consistent amount of customers on macsources.com and amazon.com (links posted below) stating the products are outdated and run rather slow when using it. Moreover, others complain saying the company creates new products rather than providing updates for their previous products just as they promised. No customer wants to keep buying and setting up a new product to maintain their data storage. No to mention, a lack of updates create a perfect out-dated environment that will be easy to hack into. After all, hackers are consistently evolving their tactics. Though most customers only post reviews when a product malfunctions, some of these consistencies do pose problems that alert people to not buy this product. Even though it may seem like the perfect way to maintain a secure cloud storage, keep these pressing issues in mind when coming up with a solution. For these reasons, I would rather stay with a large well-trusted company such as Microsoft’s OneDrive system rather than go with an out of date Lima system, unless you could find a product such as Lima that updates on a regular basis.
Links to Reviews:
https://macsources.com/lima-personal-cloud-storage-review/
https://www.amazon.com/Lima-Original-Private-Storage-Smartphone/dp/B01H5KKGRE/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1499382791&sr=8-2&keywords=lima+cloud
@Irene: You mentioned that one of the biggest problems would be that if you can access your data from anywhere that means that you would be using a different wifi connection and that way a hacker could easily gain access to the net and steal or manipulate your information.
Of course it is a huge problem but there are several ways to reduce risk and protect data. Several articles focus on that: 1) Know who’s accessing what; 2) Limit data access based on user context; 3) Take a risk-based approach to securing assets used in the cloud; 4) Extend security to the device; 5) Add intelligence to network protection; 6) Build in the ability to see through the cloud. If you are still interested in look at https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/sep/05/cloud-computing-security-protect-data.