Are Two Cloud Servers Better Than One?
In her case, as in others, cost still trumps these privacy concerns. But the question remains: Are businesses legally protected if cloud systems are breached and private data is leaked?
Questions such as these have Washington researchers at EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) waging an uphill battle for cloud regulation. The group has unsuccessfully asked the Federal Trade Commission to provide privacy safeguards for Google's cloud-based service Google Drive, which has the right to "reproduce, modify, and create derivative works" using uploaded content, as well as "to publicly display files," according to EPIC.
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Retention concerns soon follow, leaving consumers to wonder whether their data can be corrupted or deleted. Take recent iPhone upgrades, for example. Their default settings sent many Apple customers' data into the "iCloud." How many of its users know that much of this data, according to the company, will likely soon reside in Apple's new center in Prineville, Ore.? If there is an outage, does phone data risk deletion?
The answer is: not likely — because Apple has opted for multiple cloud centers. It seems the answer to risk is to buy backup clouds, or "redundancies" in IT parlance.
The trend is based on the logic that if you are using cloud services, two clouds are better than one.
