Why You Should Feel Secure About Microsoft Cloud Security

It’s funny how, when new technology that’s undeniably an improvement on the old presents itself to the world, it has to spend a probationary period as the scary, misunderstood unknown until winning acceptance as the superior choice.cloud-computing

So it is with cloud computing

Small businesses have been adopting cloud services at a feverish rate in the last stretch, handing payroll, e-mail, accounting and storage needs into its embrace hand over fist.

But a swell of well-publicized breaches has called cloud security into question and lots of folks are still anxious about trusting the stuff (clearly having forgotten about the data breaks, loss and hijacking that have marred computing since the mainframe was its own novelty).

They needn’t be. Running your business on outdated technology, or keeping valuable info in a backroom server or a laptop, is considerably more risky than any modern alternative. And the cloud — Microsoft’s version of it in particular — is actually the safest place there is for small businesses to store their sensitive data.

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Full stop. Here are three reasons why:

1. Nobody can physically access the servers that hold your data (save the occasional maintenance tech, and they can’t distinguish whose data is on which disk). That’s an eminently preferable situation to the one in which data is hosted by open-to-many on-premise servers.
2. When data moves from your computer into the Microsoft cloud, it’s encrypted. That means it can’t be got at by anyone without the encryption key specific to that file. And Microsoft’s encryption capabilities are continuously improving. The company not only employs experts whose job it is to improve its products and services’ security, but hackers whose job it is to crack them.
3. Customer control. The best security control is only as good as its weakest link. Sometimes, that’s the user. Users who establish strict access settings that define who can get into what file, and employ strong, unique passwords that they update frequently do themselves a massive service on the security front.

Ultimately, the trick to ensuring a secure cloud implementation is to work with a competent, experienced provider — like Microsoft — that’s committed to furnishing the very height in technologically advanced security services.

Microsoft takes its responsibility to protect the workloads of its clients seriously. And such dedicated and assiduous attention to detail has always got to trump any poorly equipped in-house alternative.