The Evolving Challenges of Data Protection

By the DynaSis Team

In the current corporate landscape, business continuity requires ongoing access to important company files, no matter what. No longer are customers willing to wait a week to receive a quote for a job or to have their order confirmed. The world operates in real time, and customers expect the businesses with which they work to do the same.

This need is leading many business owners to rely on real time data storage solutions that could actually hamper their business continuity in certain situations. To illustrate this point, let’s consider Dropbox—one of the most popular file storage services on the planet. Dropbox is an inexpensive way for organizations to store and share files among employees, customers and other authorized individuals. However, Dropbox has serious limitations from a business continuity perspective.

Dropbox has an easy-to-use mechanism to help users recover deleted files—or restore older versions—for up to 30 days (up to a year with Dropbox for Business Accounts). It also has redundant servers protecting customer data in the event Dropbox itself experiences a server failure.

However, for company personnel to make the most effective use of Dropbox, they must sync some or all company files to their local computing devices. To do this, during setup they tell Dropbox what data they want to store and sync locally. Most users share and sync folders rather than individual files, and these can become enormous over time as other users add files to them.

If local devices lack enough storage to stay in sync, Dropbox will stop syncing and prompt the users to reevaluate their Dropbox allocations, a process that wastes time and drains productivity. When users don’t have time or knowledge to manage those allocations, many will save their files locally, planning to upload them to Dropbox later. When that doesn’t happen, the entire system falls apart, along with any pretense of having a complete backup.

Second, most file storage and sharing services such as Dropbox (and Google Drive) do not offer end-to end-security. Files stored with them are encrypted on those servers, but they're not locally encrypted on the computers where they originate before being synced to the cloud, which also means they are not encrypted during transit. If a hacker has access to a user’s account or has penetrated the corporate network, he or she could easily steal company data unless the firm is using local encryption, which is a rarity.

The advanced file backup solutions offered by companies such as DynaSis will eliminate both of these challenges, and they can incorporate on-demand file access and sharing, as well. Productivity is maximized, and concerns about local PC and backup continuity are resolved.

In today’s threat laden environment, data protection is king, and ensuring it is appropriately secured and replicated is essential. We’re not saying that companies should avoid online file storage and sharing. Rather, we’re suggesting that business owners should work with a competent IT advisor that can help them determine exactly which file storage, sharing and backup solutions are right for their environments.

About DynaSis

DynaSis is an Atlanta IT services and cloud computing provider for small and midsized businesses. All of our solutions focus on helping companies achieve the three fundamental IT necessities of the modern business—availability, security and mobility. We specialize in on-demand and on-premise managed IT services, managed cloud infrastructure, desktops and backups, and professional hardware and equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis’ IT support and services, visit www.dynasis.com.