The ink was barely dry on our in depth article http://www.tfblog.tenantfile.com/2013/10/think-again-before-putting-confidential-data-in-the-cloud/ on the security of your data before another MAJOR breach happened. (Actually, we type on a screen but if we were using ink, it would still be wet!). The latest is Target, with TENS OF MILLIONS losing their valuable personal and financial information.
Just to name a few besides Target, this year thieves have stolen identities, personal records, passwords, financial information, credit card number, and more from the likes of Gmail, Twitter, Living Social, Barnes and Noble, TJ Max, Marshall’s, Adobe and many, many other companies. How safe do you really think your online data is?
What is your property management company responsible for? Dos your software keep the personal information of your owners including names, addresses, phone numbers, email, social security numbers, employers, and more? How about bank account numbers, routing numbers, and passwords? What do you think would happen if all of that private information was exposed to an identity theft ring? Would your cloud-based software company be held responsible, or would you?
And that is just the owners: what about your own company information and your tenant information? A security breach could literally put you out of business overnight. It could take months or even years for the mess to get resolved and there could be legal ramifications as well.
Additionally, if your ‘cloud-based’ software experienced a major data breach, it could easily shut down the whole process to stop the hemorrhaging. Even if your own data wasn’t compromised, your entire business would be shut down without access to your records. What if they never recovered and went out of business – with your owner, your tenant, and your own data and financial records?
We are hearing daily from customers that are refusing to put their valuable data online, and we share their concerns. Please be aware of what if going on, and make sure ‘at least’ that you use passwords that are not easy to guess, although in our opinion that is a false security – everything can be stolen by savvy crooks. Well, here’s to the next major news story about another security breach. I hope it isn’t you, but at least if you use the Tenant File you have control of your own data!
My data is backed up in the cloud, right? Sure, there are redundant backups of your data. That means more servers with your information and more avenues for compromising it. Has your computer ever gone down? Well, so do servers. And when that happens, your data is inaccessible. Maybe there is a hacker attack and the server is shut down for safety reasons, or maybe the electrical grid is compromised, or a natural disaster happens, the list is endless. If you are running your application on the cloud, your business is dead in the water, and your clients have no access to their data. You can’t process any payments, pay bills, or market your business because everything your business does is done online. Maybe someday you can get the data back, but it could be days or weeks to re-enter lost information. Imaging that if your data is lost and there are hundreds or millions of other clients hosted on the same server, how long would it take to get to you?
y payments are reasonable, is the cloud a good deal? Certainly it is for the vendors. According to the research firm IDC, 2012 revenues are estimated to be 42 billion dollars and estimates for 2013 are as high as 131 billion, according to Gartner, a leading information technology research and advisory company. Consumers are used to monthly payments drafted from their bank account, but often don’t realize the eventual cost. For example, property managers that use ‘software as a service’ (SAAS) typically pay an amount per managed property, and a dollar per property is common. So, if you manage 20 rental units, you’ll pay $20.00 month. But that cost is unending, and can go up at the vendors’ discretion. You pay the increase, or else they can switch you off, effectively shutting down your business. Let’s say you pick up management on a 200 unit apartment building. Your monthly cost skyrockets to $220.00 per month, or $2640.00 per year just to 
What other factors could affect my data? There are other ways to compromise your data. One way is a malicious ‘denial of service’ where automated systems flood a server to the point that it has to shut down, leaving the customers stranded. In 2011, about 15% of all small businesses were affected by such an interruption, and a whopping 30% of all large businesses were affected. Often those attacks are not reported or even noticed if they are quickly addressed, but other attacks have caused complete outages. Another way that your data could be affected is by natural disasters at the server site, cyber attacks, and electrical grid attacks. While a customer might understand if your business was affected by a fire or hurricane, they might not understand that a server in France could affect their valuable information. If your business was affected, you could take your backups to another computer system, but your cloud data is beyond your control.
r provider promise they are online 99.5 percent of the time? That looks great, who can complain about just a .05 percent downtime? Lots of businesses can, and in fact this is only a promise usually not supported by a ‘guarantee’ that compensates you if it doesn’t work out. Doing the math you’ll find that the ‘expected’ downtime is 44 hours per year, or 3.6 hours per week that your business can’t operate if it depends on the cloud to run. However, you will still need to pay all of your employees for that time.
