Cloud computing is an inevitability that you can no longer ignore. Most studies suggest that businesses without a proper recovery plan shut down within 12 months of a flood or fire. With roughly 30,000 service providers in storage and backup, how do you go about choosing the one that serves you perfectly. Few areas of concern could be security concerns ,expensive bandwith, uptime history or unwanted features.
Security:First and foremost, security of your data should be the topmost priority.The Secure Socket Layer(SSL) and Transport Secure Layer(TSL) is the standard and most widely deployed security protocol when transferring data. Going forward, more encryption protocols are required to protect your digital assets in the cloud.Your provider should offer a minimum 128-bit encryption but the ideal is always a 256-bit encryption.
Once you are satisfied with the level of security, you need to probe further into their services and features including :
Regulatory Compliance: It can cover many things from Government regulations-Sarbanes-Oxley and EU Data Protection Act to industry regulations such as PCI-DSS and HIPAA. You need to make sure that your provider submits all audits and follows all regulations. It is all the more important with the 43A amendment to the IT Security Act 2000.
Physical and Digital Security: Does your provider have a good access management strategy and data center orchestration for their data center. Is the data stored protected by a comprehensive endpoint security solution or network based hardware and software security.With 17 percent of Internet servers vulnerable to the recent Heartbleed bug , this aspect is a must to look into.
Recovery Capabilities: A natural disaster or a simple accident can threaten your data.You need to make sure that your provider has “Hot Sites” and “Warm Sites” with defined Service Level Agreements by the hour. Do they run Disaster recovery tests regularly. The Huffington Post-Hurricane Sandy case study is a case in point.
Integrated Service Provider: An Integration Data Protection Plan includes anti-virus expertise,data cleaning and hardware lifecycle management. A stand-alone backup service provider would not be able to offer this.Do they offer value such as pricing options for different data types.
There would be a lot of other but critical things to consider, your comments on same are welcome!