Current applications are data-hungry, especially AI and machine learning platforms that require large volumes of data to function. Applications use your data to train their AI/ML models. How this data is actually pre-processed, stored, accessed, processed internally is impossible to know ahead of time, better known in the field as the black box problem.
The only way you can limit how they utilize your data is to prevent them from accessing it in the first place. Thus, the issues of data access and how companies are analyzing your data have become very important in today’s increasingly digitized world.
How Private is your Data on Cloud-Based Platforms?
Every time you choose a new cloud-based platform that you will entrust with your data, consider the following questions:
- Who has access to your data?
- What can/will they do with it?
Ultimately, you’re trying to determine how secure your data is in the cloud, and how easy it is for unauthorized users to access part or all of your data as long as it’s stored in their platform. Are you even aware of who will have visibility into your data, in what form, for what purpose, and for how long? More importantly–do you have any control over this?
These questions are not easy to answer when you are selecting a new cloud storage platform, because no one knows for sure.
At the same time, it’s becoming mandatory for businesses to take greater precautions to protect the data they store. So as a business that acts as a custodian of its customers’ data, you cannot ignore these pertinent questions.
What’s the Issue?
There is no doubt that cloud platforms are becoming more sophisticated in terms of their security capabilities. So in many cases, you’re still better off storing data in the cloud to protect it from unauthorized access than on your devices or private data centers.
However, the problem isn’t that these platforms can’t protect you from data breaches or hacks–which they’re quite effective in doing. Rather, the problem is in the types of ‘data analysis’, ‘data mining’, ‘model learning’, and other training models that can be executed on your data by the platforms themselves.
The question then turns from what do you want to be done with your data to what you do not want to be done with your data.
Do you want your data to be a participant in training models that help your business competition, for instance? Again, how private is your data, really? How many “authorized entities” will gain access to your data without your knowledge for their own gain and research throughout its lifetime stored on the cloud?
So even though cloud storage is the better protection for your data from direct attacks, there are still a multitude of concerns and data privacy issues that are posed by these platforms today.
Data Encryption as the Solution
So, what can you do about these data privacy issues in the cloud? We suggest encrypting the sensitive data in your cloud storage–as soon as possible.
Data encryption is the one stone to kill two birds–data security and data privacy in the cloud.
Privacy has become more important than ever over the past ten years. Plus, new regulations like GDPR and CCPA have emerged, enshrining the need for privacy controls to be baked into the design of online platforms and services.
With data encryption, data is translated into another form or code that is unreadable, and only people with an authorized key will be able to read it. To this day, it is still one of the most popular and effective ways used by organizations to protect their data. So, encryption gives you full control over who actually is an authorized user to access your data.
Encrypt Data with the GarbleCloud Platform
Data encryption with GarbleCloud gives you all the data protection you need, without sacrificing ease of use and collaboration abilities. So, you can still leverage all the productivity features of your cloud workflow tools with no compromises on privacy and security.
No matter how secure a cloud platform touts itself to be, you now understand all the ways your data can still be exploited for others’ gain without your knowledge. Adding GarbleCloud to your security stack gives you unparalleled control over how data is shared and accessed over its lifetime.
Try GarbleCloud for free today to supercharge your data protection.