The very word "cloud" often strikes fear in the hearts of those of us concerned (maybe, consumed) with having a SECURE environment for sensitive data. This is especially true in the financial services industry. But there is an old song lyric which states... "ignorance, and prejudice, and fear, walk hand un hand". But generalities aside... will you trust your data to anything of the like, without thorough vetting and due diligence? Of course not! Certainly, you shouldn't. Here are a few things to understand about "the cloud".
1. Someone else's computer: That's the catch-phrase response to the question.. what IS the cloud? But how can I know it is secure? The "cloud" deserves some definition, and delineation. Not all "clouds" are created equally. 2. Types of clouds: There are public clouds, private clouds, shared servers, exclusive server environments.
3. The Right Fit: Which is right for you? Which is right for your work environment? Which is right to remove any question of security?
NON-PRIVATE CLOUD:
Cloud services which are not private, or semi-private, consist of solutions you might find for storage of your personal data (e.g. your mobile device data; email, photos, etc.) which folks take advantage of everyday. But when it comes to your customers' financial data ...do you want to trust that data to unknown hands and locations?
PRIVATE CLOUD:
Services such as CBSi utilize a "private cloud". That is to say...the very people you speak with, and partner with, know precisely where every mega-bit of your data is; whether production data your bank employees access daily, or backed up data replicated to an offsite disaster recovery facility. Put simply... CBSi owns the servers, the communications equipment, etc. We simply provide the ease of use / functionality for you to be able to access your core accounting, and other solutions, over a secure Virtual Private Network. We manage the hardware, so you don't have to. CBSi personnel provide experienced support for the products and services we offer, and we've been "bankers" ourselves.