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Fast Fact Friday: Trusting Cloud Security

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Fast FactAccording to a recent survey of 950 IT executives and staff members by BetterCloud found that:

IT Execs are 29% less likely than their staff to say their team lacks full control over their SaaS applications

IT Staff are 56% more than their bosses likely to feel they lack full visibility into SaaS applications

IT Staff are 139% more likely than IT Execs to believe the former employees still have access to company data

Are you moving to the cloud? Is your roadmap in line with your business goals? Contact us for a no-obligation Cloud Advisor session.

 

Yahoo Attempts to Keep Users by Violating Their Trust

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Yahoo! Mistreats Customers
Some of the questions we frequently answer when exploring cloud options for small and midsize businesses are about how we will be able to get the data out of the service and/or move to a different service if necessary. Our answer is that reputable cloud providers understand these concerns and provide the means to export, remove, and transfer data and accounts.

According to a report this week by ZDNet, Yahoo has decided to violate Yahoo Mail users’ trust and block users from automatically forwarded emails to other accounts and services. While Yahoo claims this feature was shut off because a better version is “in development”, the feature remains active for those already using the service. And since when does a cloud service turn off a popular feature before the upgraded replacement is ready?

Hey, Yahoo!, We Call “BULLSHIT!”

This is not a feature upgrade in the making, this is a blatant attempt to make it difficult for users to abandon ship following Yahoo’s delayed disclosure that 500 million accounts were breached in 2014. Verizon is already asking for $1 Billion dollars back on the purchase price given that Yahoo! failed to disclose the breach and associated liabilities during due diligence for the acquisition. A rapid loss of business customers will only further cripple Yahoo!.

Instead of keeping customers by earning back their trust, Yahoo! is clearly manipulating their services. By giving the appearance that moving to a new provider is more difficult, Yahoo! hopes to raise the “barrier to exit” enough to keep its customers.

Still Easy to Move

While automated forwarding is nice to have when changing email providers, the feature is not a requirement.  We can still capture and move all of your existing data to G Suite or Office 365. Without forwarding, we change the timing of events to avoid any data loss.

Your Next Move

Maybe it is time to reconsider Yahoo! as your email provider. With the Verizon-Yahoo! merger focused on other services, and the outcome now uncertain, may now is the time to switch to a provider focused on helping you and your business, not just protecting their own.

If the time is now, or soon, we have special incentives to lessen the cost of moving from Yahoo! Mail to G Suite or Office 365. Learn more or contact us for a free consultation.

Friday Thought: Who Do You Trust?

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Recently, in one of my LinkedIn groups, a member asked folks about outsourcing and cloud computing.  Predictably, the cloud computing naysayers chimed in with their usual argument, which often sounds like “I would never put my data in the cloud because you don’t have control”.

To me, this sounds like an argument from past generations against putting your money in a bank.  The naysayers’ concern is not control, but trust. The naysayers don’t trust the cloud provider with their data.  They don’t trust that the cloud provider will really delete information when you hit the delete key.  They don’t trust that the administrators will not access data.

And yet, these same folks fail to look at their own environments in the same way.

In a Windows server environment, the “Domain Administrator” has complete access to everything — every piece of data, every piece of user information.  In most small and mid-size enterprises, everybody on your IT team as Domain Administrator privileges.  A disgruntled team member can not only destroy your data, but can destroy the backups you would need to recover.

Use an IT service firm or the services of an MSP?  Chances are, one or more of their employees have “Domain Administrator” or other rights that gives them access to some or all of your data.  How do you know that the help desk staffer at your IT provider will not get upset with his boss and seek revenge by destroying or stealing your data?

Clearly if you don’t trust an employee, you let them go.  And no business owner would sign up for outside services if they did not trust the vendor enough to also trust the vendors’ employees.  Cloud computing is no different. Well … maybe a little different.

Unlike your network administrator, the vast majority of cloud computing vendors have no access to your data.  They do not need access to provide you with service.  Reputable providers include data privacy and security clauses in their contracts and their service level agreements.

Unlike most in-house systems, cloud computing solutions are designed to keep everyone but you out of your data.  Google, for example, obfuscates every occurrence of every piece of data on every server.  Most SMEs cannot afford anything close to the levels of encryption and security included in the architecture of most cloud computing services.

Control and trust go hand in hand.  And, cloud computing may not offer the best solutions for every business, or even yours.  When assessing your options, consider the benefits and risk of the cloud with the real benefits and risks of your current network and systems.