How much do you trust the cloud?

How much do you trust the cloud? This is a very loaded question and it is very connected to the customer loyalty that companies display these days and how much trust they convey in their encryption methodologies.

(1) Loyalty to customers

If you are using services from big companies, then the reality is that these services are not the only focus of this company and at the same time you know that the company is very stable overall. They could discontinue a product if it is not generating enough revenue; that is totally understood because they have responsibilities towards shareholders to keep the revenue flowing. One recent example is Google Reader being discontinued even though it is not a crucial part of average person's cloud experience.When I say crucial, I am talking about the documents that you save in the cloud and important emails. For example, I would be very frustrated if my Gmail and Hotmail/Outlook email services got discontinued. I would be very impacted if Google Drive, SkyDrive and Dropbox got discontinued.

On the hand, if you are using services from smaller companies, you know that this specific service is one of few products they offer and that they are committed to it; however, you have to carefully track the stability of this company.

(2) Encryption Methodologies

You base your decisions on the encryption methodologies for passwords and data that you store in the cloud.

For example, you know that Google does not encrypt your data that is in the cloud, but they offer a very good two-step authentication that gives you extra confidence.

On the other hand, Dropbox encrypts the data that you store on their servers and until recently they did not have two-factor authentication. Now that they do have two-factor authentication, their service is definitely more attractive to me.

In conclusion, you are the one who needs to decide for yourself by taking this information into your consideration.

For those of you who are new to cloud solutions, here are some of the products/companies. You probably are not new to the cloud because you are on my blog. In any case, here is the list:

• GMail
• Hotmail/Outlook
• Yahoo Email

• Google Drive
• Dropbox
• SkyDrive
• Carbonite.com

• 1Password
• LastPass.com

• Facebook.com
• Twitter.com

• Evernote
• OneNote in SkyDrive
• OmniFocus