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Big cloud

Like it or not, applied science is becoming ever more than reliant on the cloud, and that has both positive and negative ramifications. On the positive side, cloud computing has opened upward a whole new world of productivity that didn't fully be earlier services like Google Docs and Office 365 came into view. On a more than personal scale, the deject flipped the entertainment industry on its head with online music lockers that make it possible to access playlists and stone out to your ZZ Acme albums wherever there's an cyberspace connection. Whether for work or play, living in the cloud can be truly crawly, but what happens when the sky starts falling?

Unfortunately, playing in the cloud isn't e'er sunshine and rainbows, a signal recently underscored when Mat Honan over at Wired fell victim to a band of hackers who weaseled their way into his Apple'southward iCloud account. Honan recounted in frightening and fascinating particular how the cyber scoundrels took advantage of iCloud's lack of a two-factor authentication process to access his account and remotely delete the information on his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. Childhood pictures of his daughter and everything else he had stored on his mobile devices were wiped clean.

If you're wondering how exactly this was made possible, Honan's investigation, which involved chatting with one of the hackers involved, takes readers through a thrilling tale of how diverse online services — in this example, Amazon, Gmail, iCloud, and Twitter — reveal but enough personal information to pose a threat to one another if a hacker is truly determined. The devil isn't in the details, nevertheless, it's in our reliance on deject computing, and sometimes in that location's hell to pay.

What if I'm actress conscientious?

PlayStation Network Logo

Millions of PlayStation Network subscribers saw the nighttime side to cloud computing when a massive security alienation compromised their accounts.

Millions of PlayStation Network (PSN) subscribers trusted Sony with their name, address, birthday, credit menu details, and other personal information, only to take all that data fall into the easily of hackers following a massive data breach that knocked PSN out of committee for nigh a month. It was a rude awakening for millions and a reminder to us all that the concept of the deject is withal very much in its infancy and not without significant security risks.

Hacker attacks aren't the but potential night clouds. Computing in the cloud requires a level of a trust for things that are ultimately out of your control, like data outages and redundancy. If a information center goes upward in flames, you have to trust that a squad of engineers will be able to repair the damage quickly and efficiently, and that offsite backups exist so that your data can exist restored. It happens more oft than many people realize.

What can I do?

Parking your data on third-party services isn't inherently bad, it'southward just risky. Y'all can mitigate that risk by practicing smart computing habits, which showtime and foremost involves maintaining multiple backups. How diligent you should be depends entirely on how much you lot value your data, and if you're sitting on mines of mission critical code, at minimum you should be backing up your digital $.25 to an offsite location on a weekly basis.

As for cloud computing services like Netflix, Dropbox, and anything else you might want to use, beingness condom is a ii-prong process. First, do your research and find out what kind of security practices are in place before entrusting your personal information. Equally Honan found out, information technology's comparatively easy to pause into someone's iCloud account and wreak havoc, and until Apple addresses this, you may want to avert using it. There's no shortage of cloud services available, then don't settle on one that doesn't take security as seriously equally you lot do.

Secondly, it all comes full circle to condom calculating practices, which we highlighted in a recent article. Unless you're willing to unplug from the cyberspace entirely (yeah, right!), y'all're going to introduce some level of cloud-based run a risk into your online life. Safe computing practices ensure you're doing everything possible on your end to forbid disaster, eliminating half the hazard in the process. The other half is up to the players on the other side of the equation, and unfortunately, the very nature of cloud computing leaves that office out of your command.

Read: What would it feel similar to alive in the cloud?