| CLOUD FORTRESS -
A SECURE ECOSYSTEM

The safest place for your data is in the cloud - not spread over dozens, hundreds of systems that talk to each other. Here is why you should store nothing on your laptop and installing software is a thing of the past.

I would like to make you aware of the advantages of having everything in the cloud - ideally, companies would allow us to bring our own devices, as long as we sign into a Chrome profile for work. Or they would just give us Chromebooks.

The world before Software as a Service

In the old world, companies would run software themselves in data centers they owned or rented. Most of the "action" in document editing, emailing and calendaring took place in applications that were installed on people's computers, so programs were developed for Windows first and later partially adapted for Mac users or mobile. All data on these computers stayed on hard drives. The big servers in the data centers were used for receiving data from the outside, transmitting it to people's computers.

Then the internet, the browser, smartphones and AI condensed into the Cloud and changed everything. Now, companies can pay for software as a service that is run centrally "in the cloud", which is cheaper and more secure by requiring less components to manage. Google Workspace is such a system. By storing data in those systems instead of computers and file servers, it can be secured more effectively. Finally, companies can focus on managing what matters in their business using cloud solutions, rather than having to manage everything in IT.

Software in the cloud - nothing installed on your laptop

IT departments can manage cloud solutions more easily than traditional software, because there is less software and less hardware:

• There are no servers, backup tapes or firewalls to secure and continuously apply security updates to.

• No third party software is required. The old world relied on a coterie of vendors: virus scanners for files on your desktop, virus scanners for files on your servers, virus scanners for files in your email, backup software. All of that needed to be maintained and paid for.

• Using third party software (that also lives in the cloud and connects to Google Workspace) is possible, of course. When you do use that fancy grammar checker, you allow it to access your online data. That is why you cannot install most Chrome extensions at work (and should be careful about that in your private life, too).

Data in the cloud

When your software runs in the cloud, your data is there, too - which is more secure than scattered on people's laptops:

• Google Workspace can store data for enterprise customers in either the US or the EU. Sensitive data can easily be stored in a way that the customer holds the encryption keys. Only the customer can access the unencrypted content - not Google, no "men in the middle" (like infrastructure and data center operators) and no nation states. Google calls this concept "Client Side Encryption" and many agree it is an adequate answer to questions around data privacy regulations, rather than building more data centers.

• Data needs to be on your machine in some form to be useful. You access it via Google Workspace services via your Chrome browser or the apps on your smartphone - those apps are managed by your company. The applications now support offline access (which is still a marvel for me), and thanks to Drive File Stream you can even keep important files on your computer - but in a secure part, not randomly scattered and filling it up, that's the difference. Companies can restrict offline access if industry laws put you in jail for taking data outside geographical boundaries - another key difference to the old world that was forever worried about hard drives and USB sticks.

• Even though people create vast amounts of data in Google Workspace, they work on shared files rather than email copies around. Sensitive files only exist once and can be labeled, edited and managed easily.

Full control by a smaller team

Finally, the cloud works differently - people can get done more, faster. This extends to IT teams:

• Online storage means that email filters and virus scanners are updated all the time. Security is a perpetual game of cat and mouse - when the planet-sized cat learns something, it can actually go back and flag an email you received a minute ago. There is no such thing as "making it through the filters" - nothing ever makes it "through", because the filters evolve and are retroactive.

• Software is continuously updated for you. In the old world, IT departments were forced into giant overhauls every couple of years or had the liberty to "skip" a version.

• Google Workspace continuously backs up everything you do - every keystroke in your Gmail draft, every change in Google Sheets, every version of the Microsoft files and PDFs you edit and store. If anything happens, you can return to the last good version. Disaster recovery is built in at every level. This is better for a world terrified by ransomware that allows people to keep client presentations on their desktop.

It's important to state why the way forward leads to the cloud. By informing yourself, you're already stepping into the future. If you would like to pay it forward, help others by leading by example and helping your leaders lead. Thank you for reading!

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