Paranormal Cloud Activity – Discover the Dark Side of the Cloud in our Halloween Special

Halloween is the time of the year, when creepy creatures walk the earth, spreading fear and dread. However, evil forces threaten to disrupt our daily lives throughout the whole year. On their search for easy prey they also try to sink their claws into the cloud. Discover with us the dark side of the cloud and learn how to protect yourself from lurking beasts.

Silent Invasion of the Data Breaches

Imagine someone silently entering your house while you are sleeping. The intruder wanders around your house, invading your privacy by digging through your drawers and looking at your family pictures. This scenario will probably give you the chills. Now imagine the same thing happening to the IT infrastructure of a company that keeps your sensitive data. Frightening, right? Without proper protection of your data, this spooky story can easily become reality.

And it does happen. More often than we know.

It is a silent invasion of data breaches. Evil spirits are reaching out with their ghostly hands in order to get a hold of your data. The number of reported breaches is increasing constantly. Additionally, there are those attacks that go undetected, in some cases even for several years. Therefore, it is very important for everyone to be proactive when it comes to cyber security. Evil forces are ready to attack as soon as they detect any weakness in the defense.

As horrible as the scenario of a data breach sounds, there are ways for you to prevent such a nightmare from happening to you. The safest — and also easiest — way to shield your data from malicious beings is to encrypt it. Using a cloud solution that offers end-to-end encryption keeps your data safe during its dangerous journeys and at rest. The attackers still might get a hold on your data but they won´t be able to use it for anything.

A Deal with the Devil aka Terms of Use

Have you ever sold your soul to the devil? No? Are you sure about that? You have probably already told one of the biggest lies on the internet at least one time: “I have read and agree to the terms and conditions”. Let's be honest here, nobody ever reads those terms. So it is entirely possible that your soul officially belongs to the devil.

What about your data in the cloud? Your provider might be in league with the devil without you noticing it. In their terms of use, some common cloud providers openly declare that they have the right to access your data. And users willingly sign those satanic blood pacts.

For example, have a look at the Microsoft Privacy Statement:

Microsoft collects data from you, through our interactions with you and through our products for a variety of purposes described below, including to operate effectively and provide you with the best experiences with our products. […] For example, if you transmit a file using Skype to another Skype user, we need to collect the content of that file to display it to you and the other user.

And it continues:

Other content we collect when providing products to you include:
• Communications, including audio, video, text (typed, inked, dictated, or otherwise), in a message, email, call, meeting request, or chat.
• Photos, images, songs, movies, software, and other media or documents you store, retrieve, or otherwise process with our cloud.”

And here is the part specifically about the content in your cloud drive:

When you use OneDrive, we collect data about your usage of the service, as well as the content you store, to provide, improve, and protect the services. Examples include indexing the contents of your OneDrive documents so that you can search for them later and using location information to enable you to search for photos based on where the photo was taken.

No need to worry though, as you can protect your data despite those wicked terms of use. By implementing a strong zero knowledge encryption, your data is of no use for the dark side. We can´t do anything about your soul though...

Curse of the Shadow-IT

IT departments also have spooky stories to tell. Just imagine the shock of finding sensitive data in the cloud that was never supposed to leave the internal IT infrastructure. In this case, the company is not haunted by an evil ghost but by its own employees. In order to ensure compliance, companies should choose a cloud security solution that allows them to create custom policies.

Another nightmare for the IT department is the existence of ghost clouds. Employees may be tempted to store data in their

cloud without the knowledge of the IT crew. This scenario might happen when a company does not use cloud solutions at all or when employees are not satisfied with the performance of the existing solution. An effective permission management can help you stay compliant and keeps away the horrors of ghost clouds.

The Cloud of Horrors

As you can see, evil spirits are looming over your sensitive data. They come in the forms of data breaches, contracts signed in blood, ghost clouds and many others. However, with the right set of measurements, you can take data security into your own hands.