Cloud Storage
What is Cloud Storage?
Cloud storage is the process of storing digital data in an
online space that spans multiple servers and locations, and it is usually
maintained by a hosting company. Essentially, an individual or organization can
store and access data in this online space maintained by a host service using
the internet.
Storing your most sensitive files locally on a hard drive is
still the logical thing to do. But its’ not always the most convenient, which
is why most of us look to cloud storage as a secondary option.
How Does Cloud Storage Help Us?
1. Optimize our cooperation. Cloud drives is a perfect
instrument for immediate data exchange. The option to give access to multiple
people makes this service a perfect tool for both distant and in-house work.
People have a need to transfer each other information every day. You can
synchronize any folder with your cloud storage and give access only to selected
people. Another benefit of cloud servers is their ability to integrate with
different office online services (like CRM or Slack) that provide automatic
data exchange.
2. Create backup for your private files. Usually, when a PC
or smartphone breaks down/gets lost or stolen, firstly owners of these devices
suffer because of wasted money, and then because of lost data.
3. Protect your work from being wasted. Every work is
precious. But in a digital world, it can be destroyed in a few moments. You
don’t want to spend your time doing nothing. With synchronizing our devices
with cloud storages these mishaps can be avoided.
4. Provide Flexibility and Scalability. The service gives
you the flexibility to work from any location. With cloud storage you can get
additional storage space or features whenever you need them (By just increasing
the plan price), scalability is not easy for other options, you can’t store
1.001Tb of data in a 1TB Hard Drive.
What needs to be done to improve this industry?
• There exists a need to spread awareness about cloud storage, its benefits and its potential problems as most people do not know much about the same.
• We need
to ensure integrity. Integrity is the assurance that the data sent is the same
as the message received and it is not altered in between. Integrity is
infringed if the transmitted message is not same as the received one. It is
ensured by: Firewalls and intrusion detection.
• We should
ensure data separation. Data of differing levels of sensitivity are to be
processed in a cloud, multiple distinct clouds can be used concurrently to
provide different levels of protection to sensitive and non-sensitive data.
This approach is taken, protective mechanisms should be required by consumers
for separating sensitive and non-sensitive data at the site of the cloud
providers.
• There are
various Cloud computing service offers on the market -
"Public"
when a service is shared and pooled between many customers;
"Private"
when the Cloud is dedicated to one customer;
"Hybrid"
when a service is partly in a public Cloud and partly in a private Cloud.
In this case we consider that the service can be studied as two interconnected processing types. We shall therefore not refer to this deployment model. An analysis of this kind will make it possible to select the most appropriate Cloud computing offer.
