As more and more businesses migrate to the cloud, the question, “How safe is it?” has

become an incredibly important one. Comprehensive research from Crowd Research

indicates that 90% of business owners said that they were moderately concerned to

very concerned about public cloud security.1 How justified are these worries about

security and the cloud?

Ever since the cloud

came into being,

people have expressed

concerns about its

security. While many

of the worst fears

about the security of

the cloud haven’t

come to pass, it is still

true that the cloud

presents security

challenges that some

companies struggle to

manage, creating the

potential for

compromised systems

and data breaches.

While the cloud will never be completely impervious to security breaches, the security risk

involved is often overstated and storing data on a private server does not guarantee that

data will be safer.2 According to business owners who have migrated to the cloud, only

28% said that their security risk was higher. The rest reported their security had improved,

remained the same, or they did not keep track.

Perhaps surprisingly, malware and hacking are not the biggest risks to cloud security.

Instead, the most prevalent cloud security issues are unauthorized access (63%), accounts

being hijacked (61%), and malicious insiders who purposely compromise organizational

security from within (43%). Comparatively, malware and denial of service (DoS) attacks

were considered to be relatively smaller risks (33% and 39%, respectively).

As the previous data shows, the biggest threat to cloud security often comes from inside

an organization, rather than without. Lax internal security policies, employee carelessness,

and malicious insiders can all compromise the safety of data irrespective of where it’s

stored – in the cloud or internally.

To help organizations keep their

data safe, cloud service providers

can provide them with tools that

help maintain cloud security and

which effectively monitor their

systems to catch potential threats

as soon as possible. Here at

frevvo, we help businesses keep

their data secure with multiple

levels of security features.

Some of the ways that frevvo keeps information shared safe on its

cloud-based web forms include:

• Keeping all processing and storage contained to private subnets

with no Internet access.

• Maintaining strict firewalls between all subnets.

• Daily security patches.

• Secure storage access auditing.

• Individual user verification for all sessions and data transfers.

To keep the cloud

secure, businesses and

service providers need

to work together. When

service providers give

organizations access to

a robust and effective

set of security tools,

those organizations

become empowered to

protect the security of

their data from within.

frevvo’s mobile

electronic web forms

and workflow approvals

allow businesses to

harness the power of

the cloud. frevvo’s

enterprise-ready web

forms are easy to build,

and can be accessed

24/7 on any device.

To learn more, visit

www.frevvo.com today.

1. http://www.crowdresearchpartners.com/portfolio_item/cloud-security/

2. http://www.cio.com/article/2922374/cloud-security/20-of-the-greatest-myths-of-cloud-security.html

Summary

The biggest security threats to the cloud include unauthorized access, malicious insiders, and employee accounts being hijacked. To combat these threats, organizations need a strong internal security policy, as well as access to security tools from service providers.