Uninformed or ignorant businesses believe that once data is stored on the cloud, companies lose their responsibility for it – although EU law says they are culpable.
Confusion over the cloud is not exactly surprising: currently laws differ depending on where in the world your servers are based and where your company is based. A report from Iron Mountain said this shows, with over three quarters of survey respondents claiming their service provider would likely get more flack than their own firm. But when it comes to storing sensitive data, it is probably worth doing your homework.
Although the evidence points in the other direction, the majority of respondents said their approach was “responsible” and said that they do take due dilligence when picking cloud suppliers. A fifth want cloud only storage for all their data.
Respondents were in the UK, Spain, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Hungary. Cloud is unsurprisingly a popular option. Iron Mountain urged all companies to understand the specific ins and outs of where their data is stored, whether it could be moved, and who has access to it. They should also consider the core IT infrastructure that is being used and if the providers have a rigorous vetting process in place to check for malware. Businesses should think about just how much data they plan to store, should make back ups, and are warned to seek out multiple providers in a tiered approach, using the cloud, tape, and disk storage.
