Image by: Julio Ignacio Olivares
By Charles Lewis

Going full-on cloud can be a scary proposition that does carry some risk. But used wisely, the cloud can be a valuable asset to your data management scheme.

The secret to the cloud is the same as The X-Files: Trust no one. No single data house should hold all of your eggs, comprende? Virtually all cloud computing risks can be minimized by having multiple cloud back-ups located on different servers.

OK, Company A is great – but you need to also have Company B running in tandem, just in case Company A’s servers go down. And they will go down at some point. Heck, what if the company’s entire network is seized by the government? You have to be ready.

Even the mighty Google’s servers crashed for something like 18 minutes recently and you would have thought it was the end of the world. And it was the end of the world, for those who solely trusted Google.

Soft Clouds, Hard Drives

In addition to your redundant cloud storage scheme, you need to also have a locally accessible hard drive or tape back-up system that doesn’t require the Internet to crack into. Keep copy number three of your data here.

And, as always, keep printed or original hard copies of the most important documents in a fireproof safe, preferably not in the same building as your offline hard drive backup.

Your final step should be to make sure that you have solid insurance and security for all of that data (including customer credit card info) you are storing.

Now the cloud can be your friend, part of a data storage solution, not the storage solution.