Posts Tagged "cloud"

The cloud. It’s convenient, inexpensive, scalable, and easy to use. Because most businesses can’t achieve the economy of scale effect common to large cloud providers, it’s cheaper to use these services than duplicating their facilities in-house. But there is a big downside to the cloud: It has security risks.

A large cloud service may contain the data of hundreds of businesses. This presents a tempting target for cyber criminals who appreciate the monetary worth of this information or who simply desire to inflict widespread damage. They can gain entry by exploiting whatever security weaknesses they find. Here are three of them:

Compromised Login Credentials

Criminals have many ways of gaining access to login credentials. They might use password cracking software that persistently tries different password guesses until they achieve a successful login. This is highly effective against weak passwords. People may be tricked into using their credentials on fake login pages, or the credentials might be stored on a mobile device that’s subsequently lost or stolen. Credentials can be obtained using visual hacking, in which a person stands behind someone logging into an account and records the keystrokes with a phone video recorder.

Data Leakage

Not all cloud service providers are created equal. Some may have employees who are negligent or just prone to making mistakes. Even though you would never hire such a person to handle your data, the security and safety of your critical business data are nevertheless in this person’s hands. An accidental transfer of your data to an unsecured server exposed to the Internet is quite possible.

Poor Data Isolation

Cloud physical resources such as CPU, networking, and databases may be shared between multiple users (tenants). The activities and data of any one tenant should not be visible or accessible to the others. In addition, if one tenant is infected (by ransomware, for example), the problem shouldn’t spread to the other tenants. However, these problems can happen when poor data isolation is in place. If a tenant’s poor login credential management allows a hacker to gain access to his data, your data may be compromised next in such an environment.

The above are by no means a complete listing of cloud security weaknesses. The main takeaway from this is the importance of carefully vetting cloud service providers from a security standpoint before using them. Secure cloud storage is an absolute necessity today because your business and reputation depend on it. WHOA.com takes security seriously. We use multiple layers of security to protect our networks from all threats. To learn more about this, please contact us.

Any business owner that works with cloud hosting knows the importance of cloud security. That is why we here at Whoa take your security seriously with our multi-layered cloud security. The cloud security that we provide comes in 7 different layers. We have outlined the different layers below to demonstrate to you the kind of peace of mind that we provide our customers.

Layer 1: Physical Security- This layer of security seeks to ensure that the physical access to the data centers that we partner with is sufficiently protected. We ensure this by only doing business with data centers that are Tier IV because of the strict security policies that these data centers have in place. This provides the peace of mind that there is never any unauthorized access to your data.

Layer 2: Network Protection- As the name suggests, this layer of security controls traffic coming in and out of the network. It also provides firewall protection through antivirus, intrusion and application protection, data filtering and malware protection.

Layer 3: Secure Multitenant Architecture- This layer of security provides protection by isolating customer workloads by use of VLAN, VXLAN, and SAN vServer segmentation.

Layer 4: Per-Tenant Firewalls- This ensures that each cloud tenant is protected by an individual firewall. This provides personal security for each individual user and protects from the various threats that are found on the internet.

Layer 5: Host-Based Firewalls- We want all of our clients to be protected by utilizing firewalls built into the operating system. The purpose of this layer of security is two-fold: to protect against threats that might breach the perimeter and protect against threats from the inside.

Layer 6: Antivirus- This layer protects by scanning your system for both inside and outside attacks. We offer this managed service so that you don’t have to worry about it.

Layer 7: Backup and Replication- We protect your data by automatically replicating it to a different geography. This is meant to ensure you that your data is protected against physical and environmental threats.

Here at Whoa, we take your security seriously. If you have any questions about our 7 layers of security, please contact us.

Having access to great products and services is simple, and anyone can do it, but does your IT service provider take the steps needed to become a trusted partner? That’s why we believe that having a “customer first” philosophy in business relationships helps to build trust

We believe that customers should always come first; it sounds cliché, but it is a necessary mantra in the field of IT consulting and services. We’ve all experienced the feeling of being kept out of the loop when it comes to servicing pieces of technology, and can agree that the feeling is not pleasant. However, not all experiences are created equal, and there are still professionals who prefer to go the extra mile.

Having A “Customer First” Philosophy Helps Builds Trust

You know your business like no one else, and you need to focus your time and resources on growing it. No company you hire will be an expert in what YOU do. That is why it is vitally important that real working relationships be built with trust and understanding. We believe that if we learn about your needs and become your trusted partner, we can build something special. It is our responsibility to listen, as well as communicate, effectively, so that our collective teams stay on the same page at all times, and work to bring your brand more success.

We put our customers first, and aim to provide top-notch support at all levels, within the scope of all projects that we manage. Our products and services are excellent, and we aim to prove our worth to your business through quantifiable actions.

Contact us when you’re ready to discuss any needs you currently have.

Many IT professionals and executives hold a common misconception that dedicated infrastructure, hosted within a business’ own walls, is always more secure than a cloud solutions offering. This understanding fails to recognize the myriad complexities that exist within managing computing services in-house.

While a dedicated server seems attractive, it comes with the added responsibilities of hiring additional trusted staff, navigating vendor solutions and contracts, and even the basic cost of added facilities and equipment management. Maintaining your own dedicated servers also limits your flexibility in accommodating additional resources and implementing ever-changing regulatory frameworks. From a liability perspective, dedicated servers leave your business open to litigation and regulatory actions should you fail to properly implement the latest security protocols and standards.

Many businesses are relieving themselves of these potentially catastrophic burdens by transitioning to cloud-based computing solutions. Much as how these businesses don’t manage their own bank vaults, professional cloud computing solutions are being used to safeguard the data and computing of both firms and their clients.

The very term “cloud” suggests a monolithic entity, incapable of customization and inflexible to the individual demands every business has. To the contrary, modern cloud infrastructure is much like clouds themselves: flexible, scalable, and multi-faceted. Even businesses requiring complex computing solutions that must meet privacy and security standards like HIPAA can use cloud solutions.

WHOA.com’s Private Cloud service provides individualized computing services on private servers, combining the benefits of a dedicated server with the flexibility, security, and uptime of a top-tier cloud platform provider.

Please contact us for details about our personalized cloud computing solutions.

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