What is the Cloud and is it Bad?

Most avid computer users have become accustomed to “the cloud” for easy, reliable, and convenient data storage. It’s difficult not to be drawn into a free storage solution that allows you to forget about USB drives, CDs, and emailing yourself dozens of updated files as you edit documents on the go.

What is the Cloud?

The idea is to put your files in one place and access them from any device anytime. But how many people actually stop and wonder what the cloud really is, and what it means exactly to put your valuable data “in the cloud”?

Big corporations like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft offer cloud storage services with a free entry level package which is often a generous amount of space for documents and photos. But how do they do this? Where does this storage space come from?

Unfortunately it’s not actually up in the ether, in a mystical electric cloud in the sky…

The “cloud” is physical hardware dispersed around the world – massive warehouses filled with computers. This creates a network that can store and process information much more efficiently than your one computer can do on its own. In fact, some computers are beginning to remove basic functionality so they can solely rely on this infrastructure and let its massive processing power do the heavy lifting. Chromebook is a good example of this.

With a reliable high-speed internet connection, web-based apps (rather than downloaded software) can be used seamlessly while these massive servers continue to run and update all the time. Plus, if one breaks, there are many others running as backup. But, you do need reliable internet.

Energy Consumption

The massive explosion of AI workloads, large language models, and dense compute infrastructure has fundamentally flipped the narrative on datacenter efficiency. While providers historically optimized for carbon neutrality, the modern realities of AI processing have drastically increased the net power and cooling water demands of hyperscale facilities worldwide, making sustainable resource management a critical ongoing infrastructure bottleneck.

Is the Cloud Bad?

Do you trust someone else to:

• Keep your data safe
• Not give it away to anyone else
• Not look at it themselves
• Completely delete it when you ask them to?

Deletion

When you upload a file into the cloud, such as the Google Cloud, it is backed up by their entire infrastructure. According to Google, it can take months for information to officially be deleted from their long-term backup systems. It’s then up to you to believe that your deleted information is really gone forever.

The “right to be forgotten” and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws are now mature frameworks across Europe, and they have been joined by a strict patchwork of US state-level privacy regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA/CPRA). Managing compliance, data sovereignty, and ensuring data is truly removed to avoid hacking or compliance penalties is increasingly difficult when you have very little control over where that third-party data actually resides.

Hackers & Other “Interested” Parties

There are many concerns about secure data storage with hackers accessing private information online every day. When you store your data on your own, you carry the full responsibility of protecting it. When you hand it over to a business, you’re not only giving them full access to your documents, you’re also handing over the responsibility of data protection to them. So keeping your confidential information and intellectual property out of the hands of hackers, internal breaches, governments, and other interested entities like marketing companies, is no longer within your power. Does that work for you?

• In 2023, the MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment ransomware attacks paralyzed major infrastructure, exposing vast amounts of sensitive customer data and costing tens of millions of dollars in payouts and lost revenue.
• The MOVEit transfer supply chain breach compromised thousands of organizations worldwide, leaking the personal and financial records of over 60 million individuals from a single cloud-adjacent vulnerability.
• High-profile cloud data exposures involving misconfigured Snowflake environments and unsecured cloud storage buckets continue to leak billions of records corporate-wide, proving that the scale of a cloud provider makes them a massive target.

Giving your responsibilities over to someone else results in systemic vulnerabilities and additional risks that you have to decide if you’re willing to take, as an individual or as a business.

Off the Cloud Solution

If you’re more comfortable with your personal documents in your own hands, this is what the DataBunker was built for. As the most secure data storage device on the market, it’s fire-proof, water-proof, EMP-proof, crush-proof, and hack-proof. Your data is safe in nearly any catastrophic disaster. You also have the option for encrypted data storage by simply downloading our software directly onto your device, so if your bunker ends up in the wrong hands, they can’t use it for anything but a paper weight.

If you don’t trust yourself with keeping it physically safe, DataBunker is now offering a backup service at our secure facility. We will send you a small shuttle device which you backup your newest files on, then mail it back and we add the new encrypted files to your stored bunker. Completely off the internet in cold storage and we do not have access to the files as they remain encrypted with only you having the keys.