By Scott McCoy

The Cloud.

It’s the new wave that people have been flocking to for the past several years.

The convenience of having access to your data at home, work, school, or while traveling is something that many people want.

But the Cloud, is really, just someone else’s computer.  And the Cloud has several major downfalls, which are widely overlooked.

Let me explain exactly what “the Cloud” is…

The Cloud is a computer system that is off-site. It’s nothing more than a bank of computers and massive hard drives that store your data.

Companies who provide Cloud data storage are taking the data from all of their clients and storing them in the same place.  And this causes two major issues.

First, when you combine a bunch of people’s stuff in one place, that place becomes a large target for bad people.

For example, it’s less effort to break into one place and get one-hundred people’s stuff – than breaking into one-hundred individual homes for the same amount of booty.

Second, it only takes one breach of security to expose everyone.

In 2012, a breach occurred with the cloud service Dropbox.

Over 500 million users have accounts with Dropbox.  In 2012, over 68-million of those users had their accounts hacked.

And all of this just came to light this week!  For four years, user accounts were compromised and nobody knew it.

This is why I don’t use Cloud services for sensitive data.

It’s risky.  And you are trusting someone else, that you don’t know, to keep your data safe.

Here is my advice…

1) Never store sensitive data on any Cloud service.
2) If you use Cloud services for backups, make sure the backup is fully encrypted and password protected.
3) If you spend a couple hundred dollars, you can setup your own private cloud service at your home or office.  This way, you have full access to your own equipment and data.
4) Do not reuse passwords!  If you ever have an account that is compromised, you don’t want that account’s password to also be your password for your important accounts. Sometimes hackers just want your password from an easy-to-breach account so they can try it on your other accounts.

And it goes without saying – never use easy to guess passwords!

Your birth-date, pet’s name, and your favorite sports team are not secure passwords!

All passwords should be made up.

And change your passwords frequently – especially with sensitive accounts like your bank, credit cards, and even your e-mail accounts!

A little knowledge and common sense can save you from hackers and the next big data breach.