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Why Picking the Right SaaS Vendor Is So Important for Cloud Security

With cloud computing gaining popularity, it's so important for businesses to understand, firstly what the cloud is and secondly, cloud security threats. In combating cloud security concerns, the best thing you can do is choose the right software as a service (SaaS) provider. In this article, I will explain why such a large emphasis is placed on SaaS vendors - in a nutshell, the cloud offers much more potential than local databases and apps, but does so at a much high risk.

Security challenges in a cloud based environment are slightly different to traditional IT challenges. Because of cloud computing's reliance on the internet, identity and authentication are no longer sufficient as the sole security measures. For example, someone could use a phishing attack to gain the credentials of an employee and use that data to access sensitive information. The onus is usually on the SaaS vendor to ensure additional safeguards are in place.

Take data security as an example. It is generally quite common for companies to stress over data security. The key difference with cloud computing is that the data must be secured by the SaaS vendor and not the company that owns the data. It is vital that the SaaS vendor understands your data is important and protects it accordingly. This will usually mean the SaaS vendor backs up the data in order to facilitate recovery (in the event of a disaster). This presents issues when the vendor subcontracts with a third party to conduct data backup. Unless you've explicitly created a contract term stating that the SaaS vendor can't subcontract, there's nothing preventing them from doing so. At which point, another company has access to your data " presenting cloud computing security concerns.

Accessing an application from any device, through the internet is one of the main advantages of moving to the cloud. However the downside is that it exposes the service to additional security risks listed above. Cloud security is continuously evolving and is generally very secure provided you choose the right software vendor. That means researching cloud vendors. WorkingMouse understands the need for your data to remain secure and protects it accordingly. Provided you're smart about cloud migration, the security concerns can be minimised and the upside of cloud computing will make you wonder why it took you so long to migrate.