Genesis – Hybrid Clouds & How to Protect Them

The term hybrid cloud covers any number of potential offerings from in-house file servers with Cloud back-up, through to application delivery and workflow via a web portal, however,the most well known of these services are Office 365 and Google Docs which in essence simply synchronise desktops to an online storage space so others can be given permission to see them.

The problem with the Hybrid Cloud is that users assume that their work, (and responsibility for it’s backup) is covered within the Hybrid service offering in some way; but this is not the case. Most of the providers are huge multinationals and hide behind obligatory, but restrictive Terms and Conditions designed to protect them and not their users in the event of loss, corruption, lack of back-up or any failure to provide the work or data they have been paid to hold. Legal action in this situation against the likes of Google or Microsoft is in itself a practical absurdity.

As far as we are aware, none of the major providers currently offer multi instance backups (MIB’s), simply synchronising user desktops to their servers, exposing users to a serious loss of data through Ransomware attack and its subsequent replication, and then accepting no responsibility whatsoever if the copy of the data they hold cannot be retrieved for any reason (it’s in the T’s and C’s). On the flip side, the cost of a Hybrid cloud solution can be alluring especially as Customers are rarely aware of the risks involved.

Genesis Managed Services offer a number of easy to deploy options to help protect your data on a Hybrid Cloud System, but can also offer much better alternatives if you wish to take a fresh look at how you do IT.