To help businesses cope with the fast-paced nature of communications technology, Atlas have decided to use our 30+ years of experience delivering business communication solutions, to put together our guide on how technology can help operational and economic performance within your business.

Part 2 – The Cloud

Cloud computing has been an important trend, which has transformed how businesses access their data and applications. The ability to store data remotely rather than on your own premises can switch your budget focus from capital expenditure to operational expenses, and speed up operations.

Large, household names such as Amazon and Microsoft have taken advantage of the opportunities to be gained from Cloud computing, to offer cloud platforms such as Azure and AWS. Despite this rise in public cloud platforms, it is estimated that less than 10% of the world’s data is currently stored in the Cloud.

So, what is holding many companies back? Often, it all comes down to an organisations ability to manage risk with opportunity.

Giving up control of your data to someone else adds a dimension of risk that is difficult to measure. Particularly, when you look into the small print of a provider contract, you may be surprised at how little control you really have.

There is also a risk associated with the assumption that, because you are outsourcing to a third party all security has been taken care of. The most important thing to remember is that it is still your data and under the new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you still bear liability. You will need to ensure your relationship with the Cloud vendor enables you to have a sufficient understanding of the what, where and how of your data storage in the Cloud.

GDPR adds further complexity to the Cloud, around jurisdiction issues that raise questions over where primary & secondary copies of your data are held. Couple this with uncertainties around Brexit and it can complicate compliancy even more, further putting off mainstream Cloud adoption. For example, a recent survey identified that the security and privacy of data in the cloud remains the leading concern for 85% of financial organisations.

Not all is lost when it comes to moving to the Cloud. Recent data breaches have been from internal, not cloud-based, databases. Plus, you simply cannot ignore the Cloud as an option. The fact that modern businesses need to be agile, flexible and innovative, means there is a place for outsourced vendors to help manage & scale resources.

As a company, we have been able to help our customers by being open as a Cloud vendor and providing them with the tools and knowledge to make a choice. When deciding where to host their data, we help them determine their level of risk and assess their overall operational need. Strategically choosing for our network of data centres to be 100% locally based has helped our customers as we can clearly demonstrate where their data is, and they have greater control & transparency over what we are doing with it.

Our top tips on how to approach Cloud Data Hosting, include:

• Have clear SLA’s with your Cloud vendor including exactly where your data resides, who has access to what and what security measures are in place to safeguard it.
• As part of GDPR it is also advisable to determine clear and well recorded processing responsibilities under the Data Controller and Processor roles.
• Remember it is your Data and as a controller, you must be sure to determine how and where it is stored and processed.
• Pay close attention to the location of cloud providers and examine whether they subcontract to other vendors. How tight your internal control is, becomes irrelevant if you don’t know what happens to your data further up the chain.
• Assess your vendor to see if they meet their security obligations. If you can see their data centre locations, the easier and more reliable this assessment will be.

If you have a specific question that is not covered in this piece, please contact us on 028 9078 6868 and a member of our team will be happy to help!

*This blog post is part of a series focusing on the changing nature of business communications and how technology can help address operational issues.