In the wake of the latest cyber attack, are you feeling differently about cloud storage? I am.
It’s quite well stated that if you put something online, expect that it can be hacked or exposed. It’s just the best way of thinking because personal information or inappropriate photos might just end up in the public eye. Assume nothing is completely safe or secure and then proceed as you will.
So the latest cyber attack came to US soil and some of the largest websites were taken offline. It had a jarring effect and opened a lot of peoples eyes. The fact we depend so much on the online world, what happens when it can be take down via a cyber attack? We just had another dose of reality.
Back to my point about assuming nothing is safe online, I should point out that it’s a bit of apples and oranges with regards to this recent internet outage. The attack was a DDoS situation and it’s not as if accounts or personal information was exposed. However sites were taken down. If you rely on cloud storage for accessing your document or information it becomes a bit more untrustworthy.
The industry will learn of course but so will the methods used to carry out cyber attacks. It’s just a question of how malicious attacks become and for what duration you might be left offline. The sky would be the limit wouldn’t it? It’s a new frontier and nobody can say how bad or how devastating attacks could become in the future.
I’m all for the convenience of having files stored on the cloud or images backed up onto the cloud. I’m also completely aware of putting all my eggs in one basket. If I assume that there will be times that I cannot access my files or information, then I need something on a local storage device.
External storage devices are cheap, as are blank blu ray discs. You could get an external blu ray writer and it would provide enough piece of mind. With the large capacity of blu ray discs you aren’t going to be worrying too much about getting everything onto one disc or having to split up all your backups. You can actually be a bit frivolous with backing up onto blu ray discs. It’s not expensive and it gives you piece of mind.
Local storage is susceptible to theft or damage. Cloud storage is susceptible to hacking and being inaccessible. The difference is that you can control your local storage more than you can with an online server. You can’t control what cyber criminals will do but you can control where you keep your backups and how many backups you keep.
If more than anything, the fact that some of the worlds largest websites were taken offline should tell everyone that the online world is susceptible. Google, Microsoft and Apple are all likely safer than most but at the same time it’s never a good idea to underestimate what hackers or cyber criminals are capable of.