What People Who Don’t Know Cloud Storage Want to Know

Everyone seems to be getting on board with ‘the cloud.” But what about people who only know the cloud as a fluffy white thing in the sky? Do you have a boss or manager from a different tech era who could benefit from using the cloud?

Here are a few key things for your manager or boss to know when thinking of making the switch from on-site servers to the cloud.

Where Does Your Work Live?

For someone like your boss who might not be familiar with how cloud systems work, they may be wondering where all the company’s document will be hosted.

Answer: A web-based server that belongs to whichever cloud system you choose. For example, Microsoft’s cloud platform Office 365 is thought to utilise almost a million servers. Those servers are highly secure, so much so that only those at Microsoft know their locations.

Your boss can feel confident that employees can work collaboratively from almost anywhere.

How Secure Is It?

As with anything, as long as you take appropriate safety measures, then switching over to a cloud based platform is very safe. Cloud systems are more secure than traditional in house server systems. That’s not to say that security threats will disappear, but most of the security breaches that happen in relation to the cloud really come from third party apps or are simply the result of human error.

Know Your Threats

Your boss or manager may think the biggest threat is hackers, and while they can be a danger to businesses using the cloud, human error from employees is a much bigger threat. A study found that employees caused almost 60% of security incidents (Experian, 2015). Employees can be a threat when they’re using personal devices to access sensitive work-related material. Your boss will need to have guidelines and expectations around personal device use. It’s really important to look at how the company is setting up systems for cloud usage, especially for handling company documents and classified data. One of the great things about the cloud is that you can set different levels of permission on files and folders, giving access to specific parties only and minimizing risk.

What Kind Of Devices Can Use It?

A great thing about the cloud is that if your device can connect to Wi-Fi then it can utilise the cloud and just about every device can connect to Wi-Fi. The practice of ‘Bringing your own device’ is increasing at many companies – providing convenience and lowering expenses for businesses.

That said, what your boss should know is that there are clear terms for BYOD users. Many security breaches occur when employees are using apps and programs that aren’t secure for use with the company cloud.

It sounds expensive, is it?   

This will be an important selling point for your manager. She or he might expect it to be expensive. The good news is that moving to the cloud will typically save money. When moving to web servers, the company is spending less money on on-site IT. Cloud services have great options for customisation and security. However this can be where the cost goes up too. Your manager should know to choose the best plan for the business whilst avoiding additional add-ons that will increase costs. Security is worth the investment but many cloud solutions come with security included so look elsewhere if you find platforms that only have security packages as an additional extra.