Establishing Trust in Cloud Computing: 5 Trust Issues to Discuss With Your Cloud Provider

Do you think that trusting a cloud provider with sensitive business data is sceptical? We agree that data is the most important business entity and to ensure its security as well as privacy - proper analysis of the cloud computing environment is a must. Where on one side, enterprises spending lots of their precious time to find a reliable cloud hosting provider, some of the cloud hosting users on the other are experiencing serious trust issues in the cloud.

Interestingly, finding a trustable cloud hosting provider has become a major responsibility among most of the businesses, security being top on their categorization list. In today’s steadily growing technology-oriented world, it is quite easy to get what you want, especially when you’re thinking about the recent hype: cloud computing.

Cloud providers come in all shapes and sizes - depending on your unique business requirements you choose the best-fit hosting solution, and therefore, it should be your responsibility to check their rules, SLAs and other terms & conditions before bonding up with them. Transparency is a significant aspect for establishing trust among connections. To ensure transparency and establish a healthy cloud-based work environment, ask these five questions to your cloud provider.

1. Who has access to my data, both physically and virtually?

It is your right to know that what security posture the cloud provider follows when their data center accessed either way, physically or virtually. No matter how small or big your data is, data should be protected firmly with advanced security techniques such as two-factor authentication, data encryption and multi-layer firewall. The hosting provider needs to give proper reports on how, when and where your data is being used and accessed.

2. Where is the data stored?

Most of the cloud providers find it convenient to store data in data centers situated at different geographical locations. According to QuickBooks server hosting experts, the main reason behind this storage practice is to avoid unnecessary data breaches. So, make sure that these kinds of geographical data storage rules work well with your business practices.

3. What is the database and storage architecture redundancy model?

Undoubtedly, sometimes it is hard to say no to the unplanned crisis such as hardware failure, external attack or, natural disaster. At such point, redundancy, in particular, helps to deal with unplanned issues without impacting business continuity. Discuss database and storage infrastructure redundancy model with your cloud hosting provider to ensure business continuity in any case.

4. What is the backup frequency and disaster recovery time?

Always remember - the more frequently your cloud provider backups the data, the better your infrastructure redundancy will be. Frequent data backups are very important for businesses as it will help them to recover the lost data. However, asking how long will it take for the cloud provider to recover your data is also a major concern that you need to discuss straightforwardly.

5. Which users can access the data? Only authorized users or, both authorized and unauthorized users?

Data privacy is as important to convey with your cloud provider as data security. Most of the QuickBooks cloud hosting providers offer multi-user accessibility that allows multiple users to access the same file at the same time without causing any disruptions. Ask your cloud provider whether they support multi-user collaboration or not.

In the nutshell

The process of evaluating potential cloud hosting providers is quite tedious, but an important one. Discussing security, privacy and other operational questions with the cloud provider help you to build confidence. So, always find it necessary to address your concerns as it is your business what’s at stake.