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What to Look for In a Cloud Storage Solution

Cloud storage can be a huge help for business and really helps things run more efficiently. However, it can seem confusing at first.

This guide is there to help you figure out what you should look for – so please read on.

 

The Stability of the Business

Before signing up with a company, you should make sure they aren’t new in this business. It’s strongly advisable to find a company that’s already established and trustworthy. If they are new on the market, there is a high risk they aren’t going to be successful, so they may go bankrupt.

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Solid Infrastructure

Cloud backup isn’t something you can afford to lose. This is why you should rather trust old and proven technology, than innovative solutions and hardware. When it comes to storing your very important data, you should make sure this is going to happen on proven infrastructure, as this should be your safest bet.

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Wide Customer Base

When it comes to storing your critical data, you can’t rely on companies that only have a handful of clients. You need to make sure the service provider you’re going to sign up with has an established and growing customer base. If their customer base is shrinking, this might be a sign of poor quality services. You should check what kind of customers the company has. If possible, you should also try to get in touch with some of them or read some use reviews.

Good Geographical Distribution Of Their Data Centers

Whenever problems occur at the primary data center, the others should be located in such a way that a fair amount of uptime is provided. Spreading the risk is essential in this type of business, as you have to abide by local laws and also to secure your servers in case of a natural disaster. The service providers need to make sure their facilities are located accordingly. You can learn more about data centers here.

Security

Before signing up with a cloud service provider, ask them about the security software they use. If they don’t disclose it to you, find someone else who does. Make sure the security program meets all requirements and has a good documentation. Security credibility is one of the essential points that can either attract customers or make them run away as fast as they can. Getting an idea of the different options out there is good and it’s recommended you read reviews from Cloud Storage Boss and other sites on security and other areas to help you to choose.

Strong Encryption

Small businesses may need to store sensitive information in the cloud, so they can’t afford the risk of having their data stolen. This is why you should find a service provider that offers your personal key encryption. If you can set your own encryption, nobody would ever manage to decrypt it and gain access to your information. This is a must have, as there is no such thing as a perfectly secure network. In addition, your provider should be able to encrypt the data once when it gets uploaded and the second time when it is stored on the server. By using this method, the security becomes much stronger than in case of using only one of the two encryption types.

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Third Party Certification and Validation

Periodic audits are a must for every cloud storage service provider. You have to make sure all processes and the hosting of your data are safe and secure. The SSAE 16 auditing standard is widely recognized, so you can trust it. This standard guarantees that the cloud provider conducts regular audits of its control activities and goals. The ISO 27001 certification is also a good thing, because it tells you that the provider follows the international standards concerning the measurement of information security management systems.

Service-Level Agreement Terms and Implementation

It is mandatory that the SLA terms are set and implemented right from the start, so that customers know precisely how their information is going to be stored and handled. At the same time, this process needs to have some transparency, in order for the customers to know what kind of services they can expect from their provider.

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