BrianGreenberg.net — Fractional CIO - A shot over the bow of unsecured, poorly architected cloud storage services.

Recently, a embarrassing data loss in the consumer market has resulted in T-Mobile, Microsoft and the Sidekick shedding doubts on companies abilities to protect your data.

T-Mobile Takes the Hit for Sidekick Data Loss. – PCWorld
Microsoft’s Danger Sidekick data loss casts dark on cloud computing – Apple Insider
Microsoft Red-Faced After Massive Sidekick Data Loss – PCWorld
Sidekick users who lost their data won’t be getting it back. T-Mobile and Microsoft say the data is gone. – Information Week
T-Mobile and Microsoft/Danger data loss is bad for the cloud – ars technica

T-Mobile announced that Microsoft may be able to recover most of the data lost.

Regardless, I strongly urge anyone who stores any kind of electronic information to back it up regularly, maintain multiple copies and keep at least one of those copies off-site. One of the simplest strategies is to back up your computer to one of two or more external hard drives and rotate them off-site to some place away from your primary copy like a safe deposit box.

This is not to say that you should avoid the cloud. In actuality, cloud and storage technologies offer fantastic solutions to todays data and information management needs, wether it’s for collaboration, backup, synchronization, file sharing or picture sharing. The data is still your data and you should take responsibility and ownership of it. That’s why I backup my data utilizing multiple strategies. Just in case.

2 responses to “A shot over the bow of unsecured, poorly architected cloud storage services.”

There is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer. – briangreenberg.net

May 29, 2016

[…] As for me, I’ve been working in the IT industry for more than 25 years and spent the larger part of my career designing computer systems at lots of companies, and I know how they work — in gruesome detail. Knowing as much as I do about how it all works, I don’t think I’ll ever completely rely on the cloud for anything — if I can avoid it. While the cloud is fantastic technology for a lot of things, I don’t want to be completely reliant on it. My data (files, picture, etc.) is too important to me to trust some faceless company that provides just a ‘best effort’ attempt at keeping my data safe and available. So, I try to take as much responsibility as I can myself. That means I’ll always synchronize a copy of my files between my computer and the cloud, just in case I can’t get on a network or a particular website, a.k.a. cloud service. This way I will always have a copy of my data on my computer and won’t be left stranded when my tether to the cloud is inevitably cut. And I always, always, back up my data somewhere safe and off-line. (See my other articles about that here, here, and here.) […]

Tethered to the cloud — There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. | CIO WaterCooler | CIOs CTOs & Change Agents

July 13, 2020

There is no cloud, it’s just someone else’s computer. – briangreenberg.net

May 29, 2016

[…] As for me, I’ve been working in the IT industry for more than 25 years and spent the larger part of my career designing computer systems at lots of companies, and I know how they work — in gruesome detail. Knowing as much as I do about how it all works, I don’t think I’ll ever completely rely on the cloud for anything — if I can avoid it. While the cloud is fantastic technology for a lot of things, I don’t want to be completely reliant on it. My data (files, picture, etc.) is too important to me to trust some faceless company that provides just a ‘best effort’ attempt at keeping my data safe and available. So, I try to take as much responsibility as I can myself. That means I’ll always synchronize a copy of my files between my computer and the cloud, just in case I can’t get on a network or a particular website, a.k.a. cloud service. This way I will always have a copy of my data on my computer and won’t be left stranded when my tether to the cloud is inevitably cut. And I always, always, back up my data somewhere safe and off-line. (See my other articles about that here, here, and here.) […]

Tethered to the cloud — There is no cloud, it's just someone else's computer. | CIO WaterCooler | CIOs CTOs & Change Agents

July 13, 2020

[…] As for me, I’ve been working in the IT industry for more than 25 years and spent the larger part of my career designing computer systems at lots of companies, and I know how they work — in gruesome detail. Knowing as much as I do about how it all works, I don’t think I’ll ever completely rely on the cloud for anything — if I can avoid it. While the cloud is fantastic technology for a lot of things, I don’t want to be completely reliant on it. My data (files, picture, etc.) is too important to me to trust some faceless company that provides just a ‘best effort’ attempt at keeping my data safe and available. So, I try to take as much responsibility as I can myself. That means I’ll always synchronize a copy of my files between my computer and the cloud, just in case I can’t get on a network or a particular website, a.k.a. cloud service. This way I will always have a copy of my data on my computer and won’t be left stranded when my tether to the cloud is inevitably cut. And I always, always, back up my data somewhere safe and off-line. (See my other articles about that here, here, and here.) […]