The cloud has been a great thing for small business owners fighting through tough economic times. Instead of purchasing costly enterprise software, business owners can save their dollars by accessing powerful computing programs in the cloud, everything from high-end word processors and project-management tools to spreadsheets and Photoshop alternatives. But, the cloud isn’t perfect, especially when it comes to security issues. Entrepreneurs need to be aware that their documents, presentations, and marketing materials can be damaged when they are stored in the cloud.

Password issues

Password protection is a crucial issue when dealing with the cloud and personal computers also. Passwords are frequently easily guessed or they’re shared too freely.

Business owners must be careful to select passwords for their cloud projects that are difficult for others to guess. The best option is for owners to include a mix of letters and numbers in their passwords. Owners should also be cautious about sharing their passwords with a lot of people. The more individuals who have access to passwords, the more in danger important data and documents are.

Hacker alert

Hackers, malware, and spyware remain serious issues for cloud environments, just as they are issues that business owners face when logging onto their personal computers everyday. What makes this particularly scary is that individual business owners have little control over how secure cloud services are. The big names — companies like Microsoft and Google — must provide their own security for the data that business owners store in the cloud.

Common sense protection

As with all computing, business owners can safeguard themselves from the loss or theft of data with some common-sense practices.

First, owners should think about what type of information they are storing in the cloud. The most sensitive data, data that could damage a business if it is lost or stolen, might not be ideal for cloud storage. Instead, this data might be better stored on a business owner’s individual computing system and dependably backed up.

Secondly, business owners must remain cautious about who they grant access to their cloud-stored data, documents, and reports. Owners are careful about whom they allow to access the files on their desktops and laptops and they should be equally careful when it comes to granting others access to their cloud-hosted information.