What is the Cloud? I’m not referring to the droplets of water condensing high above us in the atmosphere (something non-existent here in Dubai). One of the most important aspects about the Cloud is that it isn’t physical. The cloud is a network of servers, and each server has a different function. Some servers use computing power to run applications or “deliver a service.”
You may not realise it but chances are that you use the Cloud daily in the form of Instagram, Pinterest, etc. In fact a recent poll showed that 86% of companies use some form of Cloud based computing.
One of the best examples to use would be Adobe, it recently moved its creative services to the cloud. If you’re wondering why you can’t walk into a store and buy the latest box set of the Creative Suite (Photoshop, Premiere Pro, etc) complete with a manual, it’s due to Adobe’s adoption of the Cloud. Now instead you have to pay a monthly or yearly subscription in order to access the CC (Creative Cloud) programs.
Another great example would be one I’m using this very moment as I write this article: Google Drive. Google Drive is a godsend for a writer like me, letting me access my drafts from anywhere, as long as I have a decent internet connection, allowing me to edit articles or type new ones up without having to worry about losing information since everything is uploaded to the Cloud. Google infact, is pushing nearly all of its services to the Cloud: every Android smartphone that uses Google’s Photo app is given the choice to upload those photos to the Cloud, letting the user access them from anywhere. The same is true for Google’s Keep and the Google Calendar.
The reasons our phones “sync” every few minutes is to let us transfer from using cloud based services on our phones, like Google or Facebook, to using them on a tablet or PC. While this is great for ease of access and mobility, how good is it security wise?
The Cloud’s foremost defense is encryption. Encryption methods utilize complex algorithms to conceal cloud-protected information. To decipher encrypted files, would-be hackers would need the encryption key. However this does not mean that it is 100% uncrackable.
You may scoff at the thought of someone hacking into the cloud but it’s happened a lot recently and with alarming frequency. Case in point would be the hacking of multiple celebrities iClouds’ (Apple’s cloud storage service) last year which led to the publishing of private photos and subsequent condemning as well as renewed fears about using the Cloud. Despite assurances by many Cloud based services even more breaches have been reported since, though they did not gain such levels of infamy.
It’s human nature to be at ease when you have your hands on something precious. That feeling of tangibility can’t be recreated by the Cloud. It’s akin to how a person would feel knowing that they have money in their wallet. A 1000 dirhams stored in a safe in your house lends itself a greater amount of value than the same amount would in your bank account. It’s quite simple why: physical security in our minds is better than virtual security and there’s a reason for that. An example would be the keeping of a diary. A physical book can be read by someone undesirable, you could have it burned and its contents would be gone forever (something not true in the case of deleting things in the Cloud) whereas a diary stored on the Cloud, if accessed by an undesirable can easily be copied and shared with a few clicks. And unfortunately, other than server racks, nothing about the Cloud is physical.
What one has to realise is that while the Cloud’s function is to provide ease of access, one has to also realise that it in turn makes it easy to access by undesirables. It’s due to this fear that I don’t sync Google’s “Photo” app to the cloud. I’d rather not have pictures of my two cats up for grabs on 4Chan. Another issue about the Cloud is that whatever data you store in it is up for grabs by most governments, such as the United States of America, as was recently revealed in the Snowden leaks.
While the Cloud may be a blessing for me when it comes to writing, it still won’t allay the fear that one day I might wake up to find that everything on the Cloud is gone. That’s why I still carry a notebook around.
