Top Five Cloud Computing Mistakes to Avoid or Risk Damaging Your Business

By Gloria Kopp

For this week, ISM will feature a Guest Blog Post from Gloria Kopp concerning the Top 5 Cloud Computing Mistakes made by businesses.

If you have streamlined your business to the cloud, you will already be seeing the outstanding benefits of being able to access everything from everywhere. It can be hugely beneficial for a business to move to the Cloud such as for CRM or any customer engagement activities, especially during the expanding stages.

However, this exciting time can sometimes cause businesses to overlook certain aspects that could prove to be dangerous to the stability of your business if not addressed properly. To stop these problems happening to you, here are the top five mistakes that businesses make and how to avoid them.

Set Your Access Privileges

If you have recently added a load of your employees so they can access your Cloud data, have you paid attention to what user roles you have given them? The roles available will depend on what Cloud package you are using, but if you have given your low-ranking employees complete administrator access, you are risking everything.

“Content edited, deleted, moved, repositioned and stolen are all some of the risks you run if you haven’t given people the right level of access, whether it’s accidental or maliciously” – says Jessica Hughes, a Data Manager and writer at Huffingtonpost.

Using a Poor Connection

When you are investing in new systems for your business, it can be heart-breaking when you are paying out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for systems that you cannot physically see. This is why some companies choose to cut back their costs.

For example, you may choose to use a low-priced Cloud storage platform or a low-quality Internet connection. This may seem like you are saving money in the right places, but you get what you pay for, and it’s going to affect your business. You could be risking all your business’s vital information simply by trying to save money on using a poor and unprotected system, so why risk it?

Always Read the Small Print

Some Cloud storage providers will not want you to move to another Cloud storage provider if you are trying to upgrade or you have found a better deal. This is more commonly known as locking-in.

Patricia Smith, an Operation Manager at Australian Help comments: “When you attempt to relocate your business’s data, you may find you come across a number of problems which either makes this process extremely long-winded or practically impossible. Of course, this is because the Cloud storage doesn’t want you to move to a competitor and they are well within their rights to stop you and effectively ‘lock you in’ if they have stated they will do so in their small print.”

To avoid this happening to you, always ask bluntly during the sales process what the company’s moving policy is on the package that you are considering purchasing.

Using Cloud Security

For many businesses and individuals, they will automatically assume that their new Cloud storage system comes with built-in security to protect their data. However, if you have not been told this as part of the selling package, how can you be sure? Not all Cloud platform providers will provide security with their standard packages, and it will either come as a more premium package, or you will have to invest in your own.

Cloud security is essential for stopping other businesses, users or hackers with malicious intent in stealing your company’s data. All your data when in the Cloud should be encrypted and secured at all times and you should have full knowledge of how to access and lock up these systems.

Always Have a Plan B

“As with all forms of technology and system use, it’s not always 100% accurate. Even Google still goes down and has problems day to day. Heck, imagine the kind of problems they go through every day! In the event that your Cloud storage provider has a problem, make sure you’re prepared as to what you’re going to do with your data” – comments Mary Rothwell, an IT Director at Academized.

Always make sure that you have got a hard-copy of all your data that’s not just on a Cloud system and make sure that it’s regularly updated, weekly if not daily, to ensure that your business is not reliant on it.

Conclusion

So many businesses today are moving their data to Cloud-based system since it’s so much easier to access everything they need and can encourage remote working and effective collaboration. However, bear these points above in mind to make sure that this move to the Cloud is more productive than it is painful.

In our next blog post, ISM will have a guest blog piece by Ronald Dod, the CEO of Visiture concerning “How Your eCommerce Brand Can Boost Your Customer Experience”.

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Gloria Kopp is a project manager and a technical writer at Boom Essays. She is a contributing expert writer at Huffingtonpost, Essayroo and the ISM blog. Gloria is additionally an author of the Studydemic blog where she writes her online reviews for students and educators. Please visit Gloria’s Twitter account: @gloria_kopp