Reasons Cloud Storage Sucks

It sucks if you care about privacy and security at all.

 

I've found the cloud and cloud computing to be fantastic for my business. Before the cloud world came to be, I had to control physical computers to work as servers. They existed, they failed, and I had to keep a huge bit in reserve for unpredictable loads. It was expensive, time consuming, and required a lot of effort to keep them running smoothly.

Once the cloud world came to be, I moved everything into a cloud computing environment where all the servers were virtual. My life changed. I have a lot more spare time to do other, more interesting things, and my servers automatically flex to accommodate increases and decreases in loads.

As a consumer, I also enjoy having the cloud to store all my documents, pictures, and stuff I want to keep. Security is excellent, if you implement the features like two step authentication and other things. Security in the cloud is exactly like security on any computer. It all depends on how careful you are. So if you're careful and do things right, the cloud is infinitely more secure than a local area network.

As far as backup is concerned, I back up everything locally and often, so that if anything ever does go wrong with the cloud, I'm covered. So far, I've never had to recover a backup. I keep making them though. You never know.

 

Cloud being infinitely more secure than a LAN? Security is exactly like security on any other computer? Not quite the silliest things I've read this year, but close.

 

I thought cloud was the hot deal for business??

 

- You pay a monthly subscription instead of a massive capital investment.
- If you miss enough payments that it goes away and you haven't backed it up, you're straight up an idiot.
- Every alternative to the "cloud" can also fail or be hacked. The vast majority are much easier to hack and less failure resistant.
- Easily fixed by reading the TOU, which I know you're a big fan of , and choosing your service provider accordingly.

Cloud sucks, but it sucks less than the alternatives for almost all applications.

You forgot to mention how trivial it is to dynamically scale a cloud solution up/down and load balance. Can your LAN do that?

I just did a project with a live launch and an unknown audience size. Could be 1,000 or 100,000. How do you deal with that on a LAN? It's trivial on AWS.

 

"THE CLOUD IS SOMEBODY ELSES COMPUTER"

It's elastic and commodity compute and storage- Period-

It is great if properly managed and supported as well as proper cost oversight- Otherwise its a cost hemorrhage and potentially risky.

 

Yup- Two of our Divisions will not allow their data to reside in "the cloud" - Front end/app/authentication/entitlement can reside there but core data/database layers cannot-

The elasticity for front end layers and with everyone currently reading the "DevOps" magazine articles and associated ********* is attractive and can actually work with proper processes and orchestration/automation maturity- But best to keep the core data local- And many firms demand that.

 

Do you use physical tokens (e.g. Yubikeys) to secure critical data? Do you have a PIN on your SIM?

If the answer is no to either, why not?

 

Thanks guys...did not know these issues...

 

That all depends. The weakest link often turns out to be an employee or even a sub-contractor with weak security. One hacked personally-owned laptop with one of them and you can lose your entire business if you're not careful.
Example: there is a vacation booking site that specializes in properties in one part of the world. They've apparently been hacked and a ton of small businesses - some of them literally Mom and Pop - now have no records of their bookings for the coming year. No idea who is coming and when. No idea of how much they paid and what their balance might be. No backups and the site owner is ghosting everybody.

Some years ago there was a photo-hosting cloud service that specialized in professional photographers. They went bust when they couldn't compete with the big guns and gave subscribers literally about 24 hours notice to retrieve all their files. Some of them had been way too trusting and had put all their eggs on one basket so to speak. With the fastest connection in the world they would not have been able to retrieve all of their files before the bankrupt company pulled the plug and their precious photographs disappeared forever.

 

Wow...frightening.

 

If you are a tech nut you can always build your own "cloud" storage, Truenas and others are pretty decent and relatively easy to use.

But if you don't want to mess with those i've recently come across this video:


I like this channel, the guy is honest and his videos are quite informative. The software in that NAS he is reviewing seems excellent, the photo backup thingy even works with Apple devices. I'm aware this isn't something for the average consumer as it costs a lot upfront but if you like this kind of stuff you can stomach it.

 

I have backups, and backups of backups, and backups of the backups of the backups.
NONE are in a cloud.
I actually put copies of stuff offsite.

If it is something I NEED access to, I just e-mail it to a few different addresses I have and keep
things in folders there. I have stuff from 2008, still, in folders. Nothing that a hacker has a need for,
nothing financial.

 

As a CPA, I love it. I use QBO for bookkeeping and Right Networks with Lacerte for taxes. Not only does it work great, it takes the security burden off my shoulder. If I had my own server, my professional rules and the IRS would require me to document security procedures and so forth. Plus, I also carry insurance.

 

I took a gamble and paid for Pcloud lifetime storage a few years ago. Of course, I have all the stuff on my computer - and using it(cloud) as the backup.
Use 2 factor authentication & subscribed to the crypto folder option.

 

But you are at the whim of the 'cloud' provider.
Their TOS's USUALLY have a line that says something like 'or anything we don't agree with'... words to that effect.

Didn't AWS dump every Conservative website that used their services, such as Dan Bongino's shows,
Parler, MeWE, I forget the MAIN ones they dumped.
Simply because they didn't agree with Conservative stances?

I'm trying to remember the reasons AWS used to dump folks off of them, I just don't recall,
but I do know it was only Conservative places that used either their cloud or their API's...

 

That's my main concern as well. The moment it's decided they don't like you they can and will drop you out of nowhere.

 

Cdk is a 4 day old Ransomware attack that anyone can be a victim. Crowdstrike is a software update failure. These are just way of life in computer world just like computers don't work underwater. Service interruption of computer systems are a given.

 

Computers work better under water than in air.

https://news.microsoft.com/source/features/sustainability/project-natick-underwater-datacenter/

 

Yeah, and on a much smaller scale, your own personal data. I have many backups of everything important; nothing on the cloud at all. All of it is replicated across every storage device I own on every computer I own. Extra paranoid? I have it on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Chances of my data vanishing or me not being able to access it are quite small at this point unless my area gets hit with a nuclear bomb...in that event who cares. Hardware is cheap, data can't be replaced at any cost.

 

You could just keep most of your files stored locally and only use the cloud for sharing docs or grabbing certain files on different devices. This way, you get the perks without depending too much on the cloud.

If you still want cloud storage but want it cheaper, check out Spendbase’s discount marketplace. They have saas discounts, so you could get cloud storage for less if you only need it sometimes.