In today?s world, where there is advancement and upgradation in the ways of communication across networks, cloud computing is a must approach for all the companies to be free from any confidential data leakage. Since email communication plays a vital role in all the business processes, it is essential to make it security proof in order to avoid breach of any important information. The risk is all the more for people who are travelling without a mobile Wi-Fi enabled laptop as they become helpless in availing a protected net environment for their official as well as personal use. This is where the cloud proves to be a useful application that helps prevent the risk of spending time outside any imperative communication loop on one?s computer, by disabling access to off the record documents.
Nowadays, many people have become malicious sources of transferring essential details about their company to other competitive ventures. Their soul intention is to harm the company, its work and clients. This malpractice has posed to be a rising threat in the world of cyber surveillance. Additionally, the carelessness of employees and social engineers has furthered the intensification of such crimes.
Research and case studies around data loss have shown that employees who are on the verge of leaving their company, may e-mail company?s private data to their personal email addresses. In fact, many of the former employees have even admitted that they in some way have accommodated themselves as intermediates in passing on the confidential data to external sources making the personalised data fall prey to uncalled out risks.
Gone are those years, when proprietary information was accessible only on papers and it was relatively easy to keep a track of the copies. The transition to internet availability and electronically stored information at work has led to complicated tracking, robust protocols and checks to guard confidential and trade furtive work products. Most companies have now secured their network behind a strong firewall and implemented data through electronic information policies to limit the likelihood of suspicious employees passing on sensitive information out of the workplace through micro drives, thumb drives and just burned DVDs.
One of the safest solutions to such breach is cloud computing that has helped in fighting back the misconducts relating to the IT industry. Cloud computing is a form of computing where computing resources are shared rather than maintaining information on local servers or personal devices to handle applications. It has helped companies safeguard their important and undisclosed information.
With the proliferation of tablet computers and smartphones, the security issue has taken a toll on many users. Consequently, manufacturers have created a new methodology of installing and storing concerned software on portable computing devices. The revolutionary applications on these gadgets allow bulk of programmes? data to be externally available on online services like Humyo, Microsoft?s SkyDrive, ZumoDrive, S3 and many others. Other applications like Dropbox, SugarSync,
SpiderOak and Box.net prove to be ?Dropbox Compatible?, which means that once they are installed on the user?s portable devices they provide a folder where files may be placed and instantly shared with other logged in users of that dropbox.
Cloud computing is the best solution for people who store their data on local or offline folders as they are prone to the maximum risk of losing confidential data. Storing MP3?s, photos, documents and videos online instead of locally maintaining offline information provides the freedom to access them whenever and wherever required with the presence internet availability.
Using cloud computing is not a tedious job. For example, if your email account is with a Web-based service like Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail or Gmail, you can log into a Web email account remotely instead of running an email programme on your computer. This leads to storing everything on the service?s computer cloud instead of amassing information on your computer. This also ensures that online storage facilities have safeguards in place for only you to access or get your files and nobody else maintains the privacy quotient of your data.
Cloud computing is gradually obtaining mass appeal in the IT industry as it enables the data center to function like the internet facilitating resources to be shared and accessed as virtual resources in a scalable and secure manner. Also, it allows businesses to access resources and shrink or expand services with respect to business requirements.
For the IT industry, cloud technology has expanded the horizon for small developers enabling them to create, test and distribute programmes to suit the needs of the user.
The writer is country manager, India & SAARC, Trend Micro