Educating Clients on Cloud Capabilities

When asked what’s the number one barrier preventing businesses, non-profits and other organizations from adopting cloud-based file sharing, most people would say security. In a way, they are right: these entities are indeed concerned with the security of their sensitive data. But the real barrier, in our view, is actually education. Let us explain using a recent example.

Last year, the city of Fresno, Calif. decided to switch to an on-premise file storage platform for three of its larger departments. They did this (predictably) because they had concerns about sharing their files in a cloud environment. 

“We want to keep the data close to our chest – basically being able to know where it is at all times — so the cloud isn’t really an option for us,” one official said. “There are other liabilities that fall into the cloud: If it becomes dormant after six months, who really owns it? If you delete it, is it really deleted? Or is it out there somewhere floating around?”

In that same story, a government official from Michigan cited concerns over data ownership as a reason for moving file-sharing back on-premise.

As you might have guessed, these municipalities were both using file sharing solutions designed for the consumer – no encryption, no audit trails and no clarity in terms of data ownership.

So you see, security wasn’t really the problem. The problem was their lack of understanding of as to how business-grade file sharing works. They could have spared themselves a round of transition costs (not to mention the costs of purchasing and maintaining the on-premise hardware) if they had been aware of the following facts about business-grade file sharing:

Data ownership. With consumer services, data ownership is often confusing. In many cases, the end-user does not actually own their data, the vendor does. With business-grade solutions, the opposite is true, and cloud vendors make this very clear in their SLAs.

File encryption. The governments referenced above both had concerns over the status of what we’ll call forgotten files – files that have been “floating around” for an extended period of time. With business-grade solutions, every file is encrypted whether it’s in transit or at rest, regardless of its age.

Compliance. It’s somewhat ironic that government departments are some of the worst violators of the various regulations pertaining to data safety and integrity. Had they known that business-grade file sharing solutions were designed form the bottom up with compliance in mind, perhaps they wouldn’t have reverted back to an on-premise solution.

Administrative oversight. It’s probably safe to assume that these municipalities (and likely scores of others) have little oversight when it comes to the file sharing process. In an effort to regain control over these processes, they brought file sharing back on-site, when all they really needed to do was to leverage a solution designed for someone other than the consumer.

These features of business-grade file sharing are part of your everyday life, but as the above article demonstrates, they are completely unknown to the vast majority of businesses, non-profits and government departments. There’s a huge opportunity for MSPs to capitalize on the growing need for secure file sharing solutions, but it has to start with education.