What are the data loss risks associated with cloud storage?

Summary: Cloud storage has become one of the popular terms in the digital world today. It allows users to store and access data, services, and applications over the Internet. Thanks to its variety of benefits, it has become a crucial part of data storage for many organizations – big or small. One of the major benefits of using cloud storage is that organizations need not set up their own IT infrastructure or data centers. Instead, they can simply rent storage, applications, and other services from a cloud service provider.

Though data stored on the cloud is considered much safer than on-site storage, there are still risks of data loss. In this post, we’ll be discussing the possible data loss risks in the cloud and how you can choose a cloud data recovery expert to recover data from the cloud.

Data Loss Risks in Cloud Storage

Here are some scenarios that can lead to loss of data from the cloud:

1. Malware Attack

Malware attacks have become common these days. A malicious application that may look legitimate can ask your permission to access your cloud resources. Once it has entered your cloud environment, it can delete, modify, or encrypt your cloud data.

2. Automatic Deletion of Data

Storage space management on cloud platforms is easy. Typically, you get the option to set up a time period, called retention period, after which the data gets automatically deleted from your cloud storage. In case you need the data deleted after this period, it is not possible to recover the data as most of the cloud service providers do not provide a mechanism to restore automatically deleted data.

3. Manual Deletion of Data

When you delete cloud data manually, there is a little possibility that your data is retained by the cloud service provider for restoration. The data can only be restored if your cloud service allows you to retain it after manual deletion. Some cloud services have default policies in place to keep your data after deletion while some may require you to take an additional service for recovery of deleted data.

For example, Amazon’s AWS cloud service Amazon EC2 allows you to create or delete instances/virtual servers – called Amazon EC2 instance. If you delete an Amazon EC2 instance, you cannot restore it unless you have Elastic Block Storage (EBS) snapshot/backup of the EC2 instance available.

4. Lack of Technical Control

As most of the cloud server management tasks are handled by the cloud service provider, you have little or no control over restoring the deleted data. In some cases, you can restore the retained data, but you may need to have considerable expertise. Else, you’d be left with an option to depend upon cloud support, which if fail to give back your deleted data, you end up losing it.

Backups are a good solution to restore the lost data. However, if the backup is not available, you need to take the help of a cloud data recovery services provider.

How to Choose the Right Cloud Data Recovery Expert?

When you lose cloud data and don’t find any way to restore it, then the only option is to seek the help of a professional cloud data recovery service provider.

However, choosing the right cloud data recovery expert is not an easy task. Though the cost of recovery is a major factor, this should not be the priority while selecting the cloud data recovery expert. Data recovery from the cloud is a complex task and requires a deep understanding of how cloud storage works and advanced techniques to recover the lost cloud data.

Here are some key factors that you must consider while selecting the cloud recovery service provider:

1. Cloud Data Recovery Expertise

The first thing you must check is that if the service provider has technical expertise and experience in handling cloud data recovery cases. You’ll be able to figure this out by analyzing the company’s trustworthiness, certifications/achievements, checking the year of establishment, cloud data recovery process, and client reviews. You can also get more information by visiting the company’s website and read case studies related to cloud data recovery.

2. Data Security

Professional data recovery experts ensure the privacy of your data. This creates a sense of trustworthiness and goodwill among the users.

If the data recovery service provider has stringent data privacy policies in place, you can trust them and seek their help in recovering your critical cloud data.

3. Customer Support

Customer service is another key factor while considering a cloud recovery provider. Top data recovery companies always value their customers and provide customer support to address all their queries. They also make sure that the customers don’t miss even a single update about their cloud data recovery job. In addition, they also provide “after recovery” support for a mutually agreed time period.

Therefore, a data recovery company, which is known for its excellent customer support, would give you a worry-free experience throughout the recovery process.

4. In-House Research & Development

The data recovery company which has its own research & development (R&D) team always has an upper hand over the others. Different types of cloud data loss cases can be handled easily if the service provider has an in-house R&D team.

5. Data Recovery Process

Enquiring about the process of data recovery would help you gauge the efficiency service provider. Avoid random methods in the first stage, it is not the one you should be considering for cloud recovery. Diagnosis of the root cause is necessary for the safe and successful recovery of your data.

Things to Remember While Creating Backup

Creating data backup is always the best thing to prevent data loss. However, there are a few things you must keep in mind while backing up your cloud data so that you can successfully restore it without any hiccups:

• Automate the data backup process. It ensures that backups are taken at regular intervals.
• Keep copies of the cloud data on your local server as well as on the cloud so that if one fails for any reason the other one is available.
• Test the backups periodically to confirm the consistency and integrity of data.

When you have a good recent backup of the cloud data available, you can restore the lost data easily. However, if you don’t have a backup or can’t restore the required data, obtain a professional data recovery expert.