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Anthem Security Breach – A Wake Up Call

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Healthcare Security Breach

The security breach at Anthem is the largest health care breach to date as pointed out by Mandiant, and we believe it’s in the top 5 security breaches of all times across any industry. This and recent breaches such as Home Depot and of course Sony Pictures Entertainment, is a clear sign that even companies with extremely robust IT infrastructure are at risk of potential attacks and malicious destruction or theft of personal data, especially for healthcare security breach.

Health care data is extremely sensitive and the issue of protection is already very important and governed under HIPAA rules.  The fact that so many dollars have already been invested in HIPAA compliance are proof that protecting this data has been taken very seriously. But keep in mind that today’s attack was not about health care or financial information, it was clearly aimed at getting personal data. We believe the big story here is that this represents 80 million potential identify thefts.

All of the major players including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Samsung have world class IT infrastructure and  security systems firmly in place. Apple surely deserves a credit for trying to limit the use of personal information for data mining, but that really addresses the marketing and spam issues, not these types of sophisticated attacks. Unfortunately it’s a never ending battle as new systems and new features will almost always introduce new vulnerabilities that can be exploited by sophisticated hackers.

It’s unlikely that these types of attacks will stop regardless of how tight a security system is, but the key take away is that security is an ongoing process that needs to continually be refined and improved over time. Companies of all sizes need to take security seriously, have the necessary software, people and processes in place, and make sure that each employee understands these processes and their individual role in securing the company’s data. And it’s no longer just companies with large data centers that are at risk. As companies move to cloud based services such as Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce and Box, they need to ensure that the data stored in these services is secure and available for recovery in the event of accidental or malicious destruction of data.

Read more on data loss in the cloud and why do we need to backup online data

Read CloudAlly’s comment featured on the Fast Company article about the Anthem Breach 

 

3 Reasons You Should Add Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Service To Your Portfolio

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Backup Services for Office 365

Every business wants to satisfy its clients and win more customers. But the question is how? For most, quality service is necessary. But is that everything that can be offered? The competition is tough and you have to stay ahead. So, the key to success is to know your competition, use the findings to your competitive advantage, and offer rich value.  Backup services for office 365 are essential for your success.

You may be a reseller of Google Apps, Office 365, or Salesforce like your competitors, but have you ever thought of offering added -value services like cloud-to-cloud backup to your customers? If you hadn’t, you must be wondering now how it fits in. If you have, but didn’t add it yet, then you should have another thought about it. Let’s see how it can help you stay ahead of your competition:

Stand out from the crowd

The success lies not in what type of cloud services your company offers, but how the offering is unique as compared to others. It is very important that you have a Unique Selling Proposition that gives your customers enough reasons to come to you rather than look at the competition.  Any service becomes unique when it is bundled with unique products or services that prove to be valuable in the market and there is a need for it.

Cloud-to-cloud backup service is a good example of a unique offer that can work as a key differentiator between you and your competitors and make you stand out from the crowd. With a cloud-to-cloud backup service added to your list of services, you can be an “all in one place” service for your customers – for example, Google App/Salesforce/ Office 365 implementation/migration to management, support and 100% backup.

Whether it’s Google Apps, Office 365, or Salesforce,every product comes with a time-bound backup feature. You have the opportunity of adding a competitive edge to your company with offering automated secured daily backups like CloudAlly.  knowing the importance of backup to the business continuity of your customers will prove you are on top of your game, and will win you new customers.

Win Customer Trust

Winning customers’ trust is very important. If you offer a solution that appears to be a compelling one, but in fact it really isn’t, your credibility gets hurt and that leads to customer attrition. It’s not just losing one customer, but also losing the opportunity of referrals as well.

Let’s take the example of Google Apps. Google keeps any deleted data for only 30 days. Now, what if a customer deletes data accidentally and never realizes that it needs to be backed up within 30 days—what happens next? The data can never be recovered and Google can’t even help with that. Won’t your customer get frustrated in that case? However, if there is an active backup of that account, data can be recovered pretty quickly. This will not only help you win customer trust, but also establish your credibility in the market.

 Increase Revenue

Increase in revenue also depends on your higher transaction value strategy and understanding what related products or services your customers might be interested in. That means the more diversified your services are, the greater opportunity there is for sales. You can also offer cloud-to-cloud backup solution as a standalone service just by partnering with us, and you can offer value by strengthening customer data protection strategy, and increase your sales.

Another way out is the number of repeat transactions generated from the same customer. If you offer a backup solution additionally as a value-added service, your customers will be satisfied and that would help you to retain a customer for a longer period of time which of course also means increase of revenue.

If you are interested in making your business distinct from your competition by adding cloud-to-cloud backup service to your portfolio, read more about CloudAlly’s Partner Program .

You can also further read more about “Why Backup Online Data” and on “Why do we need to backup Office 365” or “Google Apps misconceptions”

How to Free Up Gmail Storage

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We’ve received quite a few inquiries lately regarding using CloudAlly to free up Gmail storage as users approach their Google Apps for Business or Google Apps for Education Gmail limit of 25GB. In order to free up Gmail storage, your users will need to do some Gmail housekeeping to remove old emails, attachments, trash and spam.

Of course before anyone starts the clean-up process you should first take a complete backup of all users within your Google Apps domain to either local or cloud-based storage to ensure that users can recover any important messages that might be inadvertently deleted during the clean-up process. And that’s where CloudAlly comes in… Read more →

SaaS Data Loss: Your Online Data Isn’t Safe.

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SaaS Data Loss

Your organization might have important data stored in the cloud. From important statistics to data required for daily needs, your organization might rely heavily on the cloud for its day-to-day work. However, what if this data stored in the cloud is lost? Getting a cloud provider for storing your applications and data might just not be enough. Having a cloud provider for your application and service does not mean that you are protected from ALL types of data loss and actually you are much more vulnerable than you were when you worked on-premise. SaaS Data Loss is an issue for most organisations.

Here is a look at some of the possible reasons for data loss in cloud.

1. Data center of your Cloud system won’t  always retrieve your data

A Spiceworks study reported that over 45 percent of respondents had reported data loss in their organization. Fourteen percent of those respondents said that they were unable to retrieve the valuable information they had lost. This is a common misconception. The data center of your SaaS provider won’t always retrieve your data. Read more →

Google Apps or Office 365?

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Google Apps or Office 365

After being a faithful Microsoft customer for years, is it time to switch over to Google when choosing between Office 365 and Google Apps? As a business owner, what do you trust more—the age-old wisdom and IT expertise of Microsoft or the innovative skills and service providing ability of Google? Google Apps or Office 365 – a tough choice.

The questions are aplenty, and as business owners, it is important to have answers that help you make a decision. The requirements for cloud services are only increasing everyday, and with Microsoft and Google being the top service providers, you need to determine which one would best suit your storage needs. Read more →

Australia Amazon Data Center

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CloudAlly News – Australia Amazon Data Center, ISO Certification & Unlimited Storage

We are happy to announce that in addition to the Amazon U.S and E.U. data centers, you can now select the Amazon Australian datacenter for CloudAlly archive storage. This ensures that your data is in the appropriate physical location to address data privacy regulation. You can contact support@cloudally.com to request a specific data center.

Amazon Data Center

ISO 27001 Certification

We’re also pleased to announce that we have achieved ISO 27001 certification, an internationally recognized accreditation for information security management. This certification recognizes CloudAlly’s ongoing commitment to secure cloud backup services by strict adherence to industry standard best practices. To achieve ISO 27001 certification, companies must strictly adhere to a number of disciplines including compliance, risk management, business continuity and security. This includes the design and implementation of extensive security controls and ongoing management of the process to maintain continued compliance. Read more →