• Ensuring data storage security has always been a priority for business and research organizations. So, here’s what we suggest – while building security policies, it is better to leverage decentralized cloud storage platforms rather than the local centralized ones.
To remain an active leader in a competitive market, organizations are adopting the changes necessary to thrive in today’s business landscape. This is where the concept of digital transformation comes in. If organizations win at digital conversion, then they will encounter increased revenue growth, enhanced labor productivity, and improved competitive position, for sure. However, implementing digital transformation in business can be quite challenging, no doubt. From establishing maturity to crafting organizational consensus to defining the objective statement to hiring a team of experts, several steps need to be followed for digitizing the business and gaining success. After meeting the prerequisites, we would like to mention the next most crucial step in digital transformation is data acquisition.
As data is the lifeblood of digital transformation, companies are actively seeking the right data sources to collect quality data for achieving digitization. Post data collection, the next main concern is data storage. Storing the collected data in the hardware storage components lists numerous issues, ranging from data storage capacity to hardware failures to internal data thefts. Ensuring data storage security is also a worry for organizations.
As a fix to these issues, cloud storage was developed to store real-time growing data on the cloud. A lot of excitement was expressed around this new technology. However, pain points were inevitably recognized around the cloud-based data storage too, after the technology enjoyed its honeymoon period.
Exploring the ‘honeymoon period’ of cloud-based data storage platforms
Expected to see a hike of around 302.5 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2021, the cloud storage service market is snowballing. Cloud storage offers companies the benefit to store data remotely, manage the fast-growing data, and secure the data with automated backup features. The stored data in the cloud can be dragged and dropped directly to any required location and accessed from anywhere, courtesy the Internet connection, within seconds.
Cloud storage platforms ensure affordability, cutting off the additional money that was earlier spent in buying storage devices and maintaining them. Hence, cloud services eliminate the annual operating and maintenance expenditure on hardware components.
Another great thing about the cloud technology is its security. Traditional storage devices are often prone to physical damage, causing data to get corrupted or lost. Since data on cloud storage is stored online, it is highly secure from any physical damage. Furthermore, with cloud storage services, internal and external data sharing has become more convenient. Companies can directly send the link where the data is located.
Even though benefits are numerous, cloud-based data storage systems are not considered the best data storage option. Why? The reason is cybersecurity threats. Data stored on the cloud faces a high risk of being hacked into. But for ensuring data storage security, giving up on cloud storage is not at all a good option. And hence, companies should build a cloud storage strategy that allows them to store the growing data on a platform that needs less management and offers easy deployment feature, while not compromising on the data security.
Revealing the best solution to the current issue
Currently, we use centralized cloud storage platforms, where all the data is accumulated in a private cloud. If hackers get access to the data center, they can quickly get hold of the all the collected data. As a fix to this issue, companies can now grab a new opportunity that offers decentralized cloud data storage by leveraging the blockchain technology and other cryptographic solutions. Unlike centralized cloud data storage platforms, the distributed cloud services can track data flow, making it impossible for anyone to add or delete data without identity verification.
The blockchain-based cloud platforms don’t store the data, they actually store cryptographic hashes of the collected data segments. Only users who are an active participant on a blockchain network can access codes of the data file, minimizing the chances of data breaches. Blockchain-based cloud storage systems are special not only because of their robust encryption algorithms but also because of the data that is distributed across computers, unlike centralized data centers.
In a nutshell, with the help of a blockchain-based cloud platform, along with ensuring data storage security, companies can observe transparency in accessing and viewing data, cut down the middlemen, and provide immutability of records.
Preparing your business for decentralized cloud-based data management systems
Since blockchain is in its infancy phase of development, many are still skeptical about the technology. Even if companies understand the promise that blockchain holds, they still hesitate to leverage the technology. But, now that the concern is around data storage and its security, companies should take a step forward and prepare their business for decentralized cloud-based data management systems based on blockchain.
We understand that adopting any new technology requires a lot of alterations in the existing infrastructure. Hence, in this blog, we provide you with a quick guide, say, a roadmap, that will help you create stable, supportive, and flexible infrastructure for blockchain-based cloud applications:
- List down the problems you face with the existing data storage systems.
- Ask a question – why do you actually need a blockchain-based cloud platform?
- Find out how exactly decentralized cloud platforms will solve your problems.
- Identify whether your employees are ready for this change.
- Encourage employees and share with them the potential of the technology.
- Train your employees if they lack the skills required for operating the necessary tools.
Given that the blockchain technology is in a developmental stage, it is understandable why people lack confidence in it currently. But, with further growth in the technology, we might see blockchain going mainstream. Right now, most companies are using centralized cloud platforms for storing data. And not every company is in the right state to leverage decentralized cloud-based platforms, let’s be real. But, as blockchain wins the trust of companies, we will see a rise in the adoption rate, for sure.
The decentralized cloud-based platforms have already challenged the cloud platforms in-use today. Let’s wait for the time when the decentralized cloud-based platforms completely take over the cloud platforms we use currently. But, for adopting the technology, a lot of preparation needs to be done. So, is your company ready to welcome this transformative technology? If not, then start preparing your business for blockchain and leverage it soon before your competitors do!
