With the new year arising we might want to think that we have evolved in ways that security breaches are almost if not completely eliminated, right? Well sadly, the answer is wrong, 2012 was just around the corner with hacks on twitter, dropbox, and even the cloud giant Google was submerged in a casual attack. With all the security breaches out there, the question that comes to our mind is: can I trust the cloud?
The answer comes in with going with the right cloud provider with the right set of features and also take a part in securing your data. With the correct cloud service and proper precautions and procedures, your data can be invulnerable of security breaches. In this blog we will give you tips and tricks on how you can enhance your cloud security by using Zoolz Cloud Backup.
1. Use Client side encryption
The utmost important feature you should be looking for when choosing a cloud solution is client side encryption where you specify the encryption key. This means that your files will be processed with zero knowledge and even if the company was held at gunpoint to release your data it will still be in its encrypted form. To set your own encryption password, go to the Backup settings page, during your first backup configuration and change the security option to Use my own password
There are plenty of cloud services that do not offer zero knowledge encryption. To test if the service does provide it, there should not be “a forget password” or “reset password” option and you should not be able to recover your encrypted data with the new password. With Zoolz, if you lose your encryption key, you will not be able to restore or access your data, so it is highly recommended that you store your key in a safe or safe deposit box written on paper and not on your computer.
Zoolz uses 256-AES military grade encryption, so if the hacker decides that they will attempt to brute force the encryption will require a computer that costs more than $1.25 billion and to will take astronomically larger than 1.3 quadrillion years to break.
It is also worth mentioning that Zoolz also transfers your data to the cloud using SSL and encrypts it on the server using 256-AES encryption, so if you choose to use Zoolz internal encryption, your data is pretty safe too.
2. Use different passwords
To access your account you must provide Zoolz with a password and it is highly recommended that it is different than your encryption password.
However, it is worth noting that Zoolz saves an irreversible hash of your password and not your actual password and that is what is sent to our databases to verify that you are the account holder. So even if the hacker managed to access our securely encrypted databases, they will only have the hash of your password and not the actual password and feeding that into the login page results in an invalid password.
Another good tip is to save both your encryption password and sign in password in two different locations, so if your computer got stolen at least your encryption password is not on it, assuming you took our advice in writing that one on a paper and storing it in a safe.
3. Don’t use the Stay logged in feature when logging in on a mobile or public computer
If you are using a public computer or you are rarely accessing your Zoolz data, uncheck the stay logged in feature to ensure that even if you forgot to logout on a public computer, or your laptop got stolen, your account will not be compromised.
Remember these important tips and your data will be stored securely on the cloud and you will not have to worry about losing your important data again.
In part 2 we will give you tips on how to securely share files and more, so stay tuned and for more information about Zoolz security, check out our white paper
