Encryption will make data in the cloud even more secure.
Encryption has been recommended as a good way of increasing data security, particularly where sensitive information relating to customers needs to be stored.
Writing for TechWorld, lawyer Brian J Henchey said this will pacify the people whose data needs to be retained as well as ensuring peace of mind for the company keeping it.
"Encryption theoretically reduces the value to third parties of any data compromised in a breach, thereby mitigating the associated cleanup costs," he explained. "As a bonus, encryption may provide data owners with a degree of control over the data that they otherwise would not have."
Although Mr Henchey acknowledged that encryption may require higher processor overheads and increase storage consumption requirements due to abandoned-data issues, this will not be a problem for businesses outsourcing document storage and records management to a third-party cloud service such as Dajon.
Sharing the lawyer’s opinion recently was David Mahdi, product manager at Entrust, who said encryption is a "clear-cut" way of keeping information safe.
Informing people that their data will be stored in this fashion could be an excellent way of providing reassurance about the cloud.
There is still some uncertainty regarding its security and sometimes reluctance to move from paper storage to the cloud, even though – as Google Enterprise director of security Eran Feigenbaum pointed out – it is usually much more secure than keeping everything in house.
Many companies will probably have upgraded to storing files on computers, but this can also be quite risky, as demonstrated by the many data breaches in the news recently.
And the cloud will avoid embarrassing cases such as one that occurred in the US during the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York.
ID Theft Info Source told the Examiner that some of the ticker tape falling on members of the public was shredded documents from the Nassau County Police Academy.
Even worse, the documents had been shredded horizontally not vertically, so information such as social security numbers, addresses, licence plate numbers and arrest reports were clearly visible to anyone who may have picked them up.
No doubt cloud storage will look very appealing to businesses who read news about that particular breach last week.