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Safeguard Google Apps With 3 Awesome Hacks

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Google Apps is one of the market leaders in the enterprise cloud space. Once upon a time it was true that no one got fired for buying Microsoft Office. Now, Google Apps is the safest and most cost effective bet for the workplace.

Competitively priced, at $5.00 per-user per-month, with Vault for an additional $5 per month, TechRadar describes it as “a very compelling service for businesses”.

Microsoft has also taken to the cloud, with Office 365. The difference is, whereas 365 takes all the functionality of Office; Google doesn’t want to be all things to all people. Instead, while equally powerful, they’ve gone for the less is more approach.

This core functionality is ten products, grouped into four main areas:Plugged into the Google ecosystem are hundreds of other apps from third-party developers, like Salesforce and Evernote, which supplement the core functionality of Google Apps.

    • Communicate: Gmail, Hangouts, Calendar
    • Store: Drive
    • Create: Docs, Slides, Sheets, Sites
    • Manage: Admin and Vault

Whether you are a team of two working on a press release or a team of two dozen working across different sites, cities and time zones, Google Apps makes it easy to coordinate, communicate and sync files and documents.

How Admins Can Safeguard Google Apps

All of this is great for businesses and their employees, but with the number of corporate cyber-attacks steadily increasing since 2005, domain-level admins have to be more vigilant than ever.Google is not impervious to attack. Neither is your domain or web host provider. Threats can come from all directions, at any time. Internally and externally. Always assume, for the sake of the organization you work for, that there is a constant clear and present danger.Here are a few ways admins can safeguard Google Apps with some useful hacks.

1. Monitor Account Activity Alerts

Sudden changes at domain level, like a user who shouldn’t have admin privileges suddenly getting them, or a user entering a password wrong several times, should be monitored closely.

These could be signs of a compromised user or an attack within your domain.

Google Apps provides admins with usage and security reports; with the most useful being the Google Apps Account Activity Report. Running this report, in order to monitor email use, file sharing, 2-step authentication and location reports should be a weekly task for proactive admins.

Here, you can also monitor for any complaints accusing your domain of spamming (via postmaster@ or abuse@ emails, which Google monitors too), which means you can take action, or risk your domain being suspended by Google.

2. Defeat Spam Attacks With A Honeypot

Hackers will often try and get into your systems the most obvious way: your digital front door, email.

Most companies will have catch-all email addresses for teams, like marketing@, sales@ or tech@yourcompany.com. These public-facing emails are useful but will often receive high spam traffic, as well as being the gateway to your systems. Hackers will use a combination of war-dialing and social engineering to gain access. One way to counter this is to set up a honeypot@ email address (but slightly less obvious). You can use resources like Project Honeypot, an open-source network that’ll help you trap spammers.

Cast your net with seemingly legitimate public email addresses to entice spammers, with the honeypot email as the only member of these groups. Back this up with adding the account to all admin console groups, as well as putting the email public, across social networks. The more real the honeypot looks, the more hackers and spam it will trap.

3. How to Survive Disaster Striking

If disaster strikes, you won’t get a work email about it.

You will probably be at home, spending time with your family. You’ll get an email from an address you won’t recognise, from your boss (his personal account), or his boss, screaming in CAPS LOCK that your domain is suspended. Suddenly, everything has disappeared! You need to fix it. ASAP.

Unfortunately, without access to the domain, you can’t access Google Apps, so you can’t file a support ticket.

What do you do next?

Well, luckily Google has toll-free support number and an online support ticket helpdesk via contact.googleapps.com.

The only problem is, within Google Apps is the Support PIN you will need to file a ticket. Not very well thought out.

But don’t panic, because there’s 2 things you can do:

  • Go old-school. Print all the information you need, including the URL, support PIN, business address, support phone number and URL, so that every admin has the information they need to get processes in motion to restore your company back to full digital health.
  • Backup. Any basic security admin will know they they need to do a backup. This is the single most important thing you can do for your entire company. We highly suggest backing up to AmazonS3 or other independent third party cloud storage platform.  Make sure that no matter what apps your teams are using, ensure their files are encrypted, synched, and backed up. That way, if the worst does happen, you’ll be able to save the day with a swift fail over solution, and a provide a full restoration, fast.

Not sure how to set up your fail over method?
Ask an Infrastructure Expert Now
 

How You Can Protect Customer Data From Shadow IT Risks

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Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has become the unlikely face of Shadow IT, thanks to the media uproar caused by the news that she used a personal email address while at the State Department.

Hillary Clinton
Image by wikipedia.org

Some politicos noted that this wasn’t on the large scale of typical Clinton family scandals, but Republicans presidential nominees have to bang the Benghazi drum when they have the opportunity. A private email account also raised concerns that Clinton was conducting diplomacy with world leaders behind the back of the diplomatic corps.

However, it’s unlikely that someone in Clintonland wasn’t aware that this could cause problems later on. So why take the risk? Knowing what they know about presidential campaigns, why did a Clinton go to the effort of having a server installed in their Chappaqua, New York home?


Addressing the press, Clinton said “Looking back, it would’ve been better if I’d simply used a second email account and carried a second phone, but at the time, this didn’t seem like an issue.”

With her work phone, a BlackBerry, Clinton wasn’t allowed a personal email account. Ever security conscious, but needing to keep up to date with family business outside of State, she didn’t want the added worry of carrying two devices.

This is something that many professionals can understand and empathize with.

And yet, CIO’s everywhere were alarmed by the fact that if this can happen at the highest level of the State Department, surely it can happen in any workplace.

How IT Departments Can Protect Against Shadow IT?

Shadow IT
Image by pat138241 freedigitalphotos.net

Firstly, consider why employees bring their own devices or use their own file sharing and cloud services, or private email accounts: usually, like Clinton, for convenience.

Coming down hard on employees will only make the problem worse, or drive staff away to competitors with a more relaxed approach to IT. Relaxed, however, shouldn’t mean insecure. With cyber-attacks on the rise, the potential for viruses to get in through new (private) routes makes this risky behaviour; one better controlled and managed than outlawed.
 

Educate

One way to protect against security breaches through shadow IT is to make employees aware of the risks, to the company, to them, your customers.
 

Empower

Find which systems or apps your employees prefer to use, compared to the enterprise suite products they ought to be using. Assess whether it’s viable to switch or use alongside, and identify ways to make them more secure in the workplace.

Encrypt

 
If employees are sharing data and files, or moving them back and forth between personal cloud services (like Dropbox, Box or Google Drive) and your companies cloud, then make sure all files are encrypted.

Some services, like Amazon and Box, offer automatic encryption, but not all do, so ensure employees know what’s available, like Credeon for Dropbox.

Ideally, staff shouldn’t be taking customer data off-site, but that isn’t always possible, which is why working with them to accommodate their user needs is a sensible approach which benefits everyone.

8 Tips to Protect Yourself and Get the Most Out of Google Drive

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One of today’s most popular cloud services is Google Drive. It’s highly secure, but it’s also only as secure as you make it. Here’s some best practices on how to protect yourself and get more out of it:

Secured web

1. Sniffing out the fakes.

Check all third party applications that are authorized to access your Google Drive, and disable any that you don’t recognize. Here’s how:

  1. Sign in to Google Drive
  2. Click on your picture in the top right hand corner and choose “Account”
  3. Scroll down to “Connected Apps And Services” 
  4. Click on “View All” next to “Account Permissions”
  5. Disable any suspicious or unrecognizable apps.

2. 2-Step Verification Makes it Harder To Hack Your Account.

Enable 2-step verification on your device for your Google account, but be sure to disable the voicemail feature. A common trick that hackers use, is that they’ll call your phone provider and pose as you saying that they forgot their PIN#. Most phone companies will far too easily give a new PIN number for your device. Hackers then access your Google Drive password by pretending they’re you on Google, and asking Google to send a voicemail of your password to your device, all the while having the PIN# to access your voicemails. Sneaky, huh? Here’s how to enable 2-step verification, and disable the voicemail option:

  1. Sign in to Google Drive
  2. Click on your picture in the top right hand corner and choose “Account”
  3. Scroll down to “Signing in”
  4. Go to 2-step verification, and click on “off” to turn it on. It’ll prompt you to go to this link to get set up.
  5. Click on “Start Setup”
  6. It’ll prompt you to verify your phone number
  7. IMPORTANT: When Google Drive asks you where they should send the codes just below your phone number, make sure that “Voice Call” is not enabled.

3. “Authenticator” Makes it Nearly Impossible To Hack Your Account.

After enabling a 2-step verification, you might also want to enable another app to help your privacy: Google authenticator on any of your mobile devices. You’ll receive a timed code that changes out every few seconds, and you don’t need an internet connection or mobile service to get a code generated. So if you use this in conjunction with a 2-step verification, you’re locking down your account really well.

  1. Find the Google Authenticator on the App Store or Google Play.
  2. Install it. It’s free.
  3. Everytime you log into your Google account, it’ll ask you for your authentication number. When you need to enter it in, just go to the Google Authenticator app, and type in the number that you see. *Note: When you see it turning red, you’re about to get a new code generated. When it’s blue, you have a bit more time to enter it in.
  4. Tip: Google Authenticator is great for a slew of cloud services, not just Google! You can even use it to further secure your Dropbox account, Microsoft account, and many others.

4. More Storage Space By Deleting Your Trash.

If you’re running out of storage space, empty your trash folder… just make sure that you don’t delete something that you need (in which case it shouldn’t be in your trash folder). Did you know that Google Drive counts your trash files as part of your storage quota? Yeah. That’s what we thought too. 😉

  1. Go to Google Drive and sign in if you aren’t already.
  2. In your labels on the left hand navigation bar, you’ll see “trash”. Click on it.
  3. Then, you can empty your trash by clicking on “trash” again to get the pull down where you’ll have an option to “empty trash”. You’ll feel so decluttered, and your storage space will increase too.
  4. Tip: Dropbox, MS OneDrive, and Amazon Cloud Drive doesn’t count your trash towards your storage quota.

5. More Storage Space By Deleting Your File Versions.

If you have multiple versions of a file, the old version of the file is also counted as part of your storage quota. Say, for example that you uploaded a 1GB video. And then you uploaded a new, 2GB version of that same video. The original as well as the uploaded video (for a total of 3GB) is counted towards your Google Drive storage quota. Here’s how to delete previous versions of a file:

  1. Sign into your Google Drive account
  2. Click on “My Drive” in the left hand navigation side bar.
  3. All your files will show up.
  4. Note: On any non-Google document (like a downloaded Microsoft doc, or a png or pdf, etc), you will be able to manage your versions. On any Google documents, you won’t need to manage any versions because any documents made in Google Drive don’t actually count towards your storage quota.
  5. Right click on a non-Google document, and a dropdown menu will pop up. One of the options in the menu is called “Manage versions”. Click on it.
  6. Make sure there are no previous versions; and if there are any, you should delete it if you don’t need it.
  7. NOTE: You’ll need to do this for each file, so it’s a long and tedious process.
  8. NOTE 2: We found this support page for more details if you need it.

6. Check to See All the Files That You’re Sharing With Others.

Check who’s sharing your documents, and remove anyone that you no longer collaborate with. Or worse still, remove anyone’s name that you don’t recognize.

Interestingly, Google Drive’s new update removed an easy search query that allowed you to search for all your files that you shared. Here’s a handy workaround:

  1. Sign into your Google Drive account.
  2. Revert back to your old Google Drive by clicking on your settings icon in the top right hand corner.
  3. In the drop down menu that ensues, there’s an option that says “Leave the new drive”. Select it.
  4. Now that you’ve reverted back to your old drive, go to the top of the page to the search tool bar next to the magnifying glass. There’s an upside-down arrow, which is the “advanced search options”. Click on it.
  5. There should be this neat dropdown menu, and here you can click on “Anyone with the link” and then once you get your search results, click on the upside down arrow (advanced search options) again and click on “owned by me”. Here you will see a list of all your files that you’ve shared with others.
  6. Go through your files, and edit sharing access file by file, as you see fit. Remove sharing privileges immediately for anyone whose name you don’t recognize.
  7. Think you’re done? Nope. Sharing files on Google Drive can also be made public so that anyone who has the link can access your document, even if you didn’t personally invite them.
    • Go to the search tool bar at the top and click on the “x” next to “Anyone with the link”. This will leave you with files “owned by me”.
    • Go back to the “advanced search options” (the upside down arrow), and select “Public on the web”. Repeat step 5 with your new search result list.
    • When you’re done, just click on your settings icon in the top right hand corner and select “Experience the New Drive” to revert back to the new Google Drive update.

7. Malware in the Form of Chrome Extensions? Yes.

If you use Google Chrome, you need to look at your Chrome extensions. What happens is that any old app might have been bought out by another company that is questionable, or sometimes there are app extensions that you never installed! Look at the app list scrutinizingly because, and I quote: “Google Chrome cannot prevent extensions from recording your browsing history”.  What does this mean? Browsing extensions can access anything you browse, including what you type in for your Google Drive password.

8. How to Get A Hard Disk Copy of Your Google Drive.

Anyone who downloaded their Google Drive to their Mac or PC, will have a hard copy of their pictures, and other documents that were not created with Google Drive on their Mac or PC. For example, an uploaded picture or a Microsoft file that was uploaded into your Google drive will download fine to your Mac or PC. However, any documents that you created using Google Docs, Google Sheets, or Google Slides will not be part of the download, and will therefore not be backed up to your PC or Mac. If you really need those documents, we suggest synching Google Drive with another cloud storage company like Dropbox. From there, you can download your Dropbox to your Mac or PC; where all your files, regardless of where they were created, can be easily downloaded on your hard disk.

We hope these tips help you get the most out of your Google Drive!

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5 Safety Concerns with Cloud Data Storage, Answered.

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cloud keyStill a relatively new innovation, cloud storage has attracted a lot of scrutiny in recent months. Before entrusting sensitive data to third party storage facilities, consumers want to know that their information is going to be stored safely and reliably. And is it? The simple answer is yes. Despite scare tactics devised by hackers to undermine consumer perception of the cloud, cloud storage remains one of the safest ways to store your data today. Let’s take a look at why.

 

 

1. If the Cloud is Secure, How was Apple’s iCloud Hacked?

After the well-publicized attack on Apple’s iCloud, polls showed an immediate drop in the popularity of cloud storage. Users reported feeling more vulnerable, and began questioning the security of their own personal data. But what really happened? The headlines said that the cloud had been hacked, that nude pictures had been stolen from the private accounts of 26 celebrities. While the photos were indeed stolen from the victims’ personal accounts, the important distinction that the popular media never made was that the cloud wasn’t hacked. The breach was a result of vulnerabilities in Apple’s password security system, enabling persistent hackers to guess the passwords and security questions of select users. The cloud itself was never actually breached.

2. How is the Cloud Protected?

To keep data secure, the front line of defense for any cloud system is encryption. Encryption methods utilize complex algorithms to conceal cloud-protected information. To decipher encrypted files, would-be hackers would need the encryption key. Although encrypted information is not 100% uncrackable, decryption requires a huge amount of computer processing power, forensic software, and a lot of time. Can it be done? Yes, the only way to keep your data safe for certain is to lock it up in a safe beneath the ground. That being said, your cloud-stored data is generally safer than your locally stored data. Cloud services utilize more complex security methods than the average computer owner is able to devise, giving your cloud-stored data an added level of protection.

 

3. What Can I Do to Help Keep My Cloud Data Safe?

Keeping your data secure is your responsibility as well as your cloud provider’s responsibility. As hackers demonstrated through the celebrity iCloud breach, poor password security can give cybercriminals an all-access pass to your private data. To keep your password safe, avoid using the same password over multiple platforms; add letters, numbers and symbols to your password, and do not utilize a password that is in any way related to your personal life. Any hacker worth his salt will know your address, your husband’s name, the type of car you drive and your favorite restaurant.

Data security is a major concern, and although options are currently limited, they exist. The most secure is likely a military grade encryption from providers like Credeon or nCrypted Cloud. This allows users to encrypt and store data with their own specifications, and securely share files with other parties that can view files with a key management system.

However, the biggest cause of concern for Cloud storage isn’t hacked data, it’s lost data. Dropbox recently had a glitch in their sync system that left many subscribers with lost files. For those who only had their files hosted on Dropbox, there was no possible way to retrieve them. In this case, redundancy to another cloud platform would have been a good idea.

 

4. Is Cloud Storage Really Reliable?

Your data might be safe if the system that it is stored on has failed, but that won’t do much to mollify you in the event of a system outage. While cloud storage keeps your data secure from fires, floods, hurricanes and computer meltdowns, it is still vulnerable in the sense that it is in the hands of a third-party system. Fortunately, since there are no geographical limits to cloud storage, you don’t have to use your local Joe schmo’s cloud services. Before selecting a cloud storage provider, do your research. Top cloud providers can keep your data safe and consistently accessible. If the company you are working with has a history of data loss and security breaches, then it’s time to move on to a new provider.

Cloud storage is much more reliable when used in tandem with another storage system, such as Google Drive. As stated earlier, the biggest concern with cloud storage is lost data, not hacked data. But that issue is eliminated if the cloud is used more as a “sharing” platform instead of a “storage” platform. By taking shared files and storing them into something like Google Drive, you can ensure that if your data is lost, you can easily locate it through the other platform. Services like cloudHQ offer seamless integration via the cloud and Google apps, Box, and Dropbox; making it impossible to lose your files.

 

5. Who is Currently Using Cloud Storage?

A recent poll stated that 86% of companies not only use extensive cloud storage systems, but multiple cloud storage systems. The survey consisted of companies from 80 different countries and collected data from as far back as 2005, before cloud storage became a hot button issue. 30% of business of 1 storage account, 16% have 2, 12% have 3, 8% have four, and 19% have 5 or more (with 13% having 0 accounts).

So what does this mean? It means that most companies either trust cloud storage enough to incorporate it significantly in their data storage efforts, or that the benefits of cloud storage are so great that it’s worth the risk. Nevertheless, the trend is not stopping. Cloud usage has seen an exponential rise every years since 2009.

So although safety seems to remain a concern, despite the guidelines and practices put forth by experts in the field, big companies are still investing resources in acquiring and developing the storage platform. Which means that cloud optimization and security will mimic the rise in its popularity.

 


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Sync Salesforce And Avoid These Three Hells

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If you’re a Salesforce user, you know what a great tool it is for managing all of your customer’s information. You also probably know that it requires a lot of effort and causes a lot of headaches in 3 separate areas: Training, Sharing and Backup. In order to get the full benefits of Salesforce, let’s look at these 3 hells, and what you can do about it.

 

1. Training hell

Training Hell

Depending on how many access levels your organization has, it can become very difficult to set up multiple training sessions for different employees. In fact, most executives don’t even have the time to learn how to create and access sales reports, so they wind up delegating it to other people who decide which metrics they should be looking at. This leaves enterprises with executive-level management who’s not in touch with the company’s full sales scope. This is a scary situation for any company, but is definitely a reality for most of them.

2. Sharing hell

2. Sharing Hell

For argument’s sake, let’s say that even if your company has a highly technical team right through to the executive-level, and they are able to learn how to take full advantage Salesforce’s reporting feature, how do they share these reports with other people in the company that don’t have a Salesforce license? It’s nearly impossible to do in a timely manner, so there’s always someone in your company that’s left out of the loop.

3. Backup hell

backup hell

Then there’s the final issue of backup: everyone needs an up-to-date copy of Salesforce in the cloud and on their hard drives, but how do you make sure that it’s actually up-to-date? There’s no auto-scheduler in Salesforce, so you have to manually go in each week and select what you want to backup to your cloud storage provider. It’s a much-needed end goal, but what a waste of time having to accomplish it.

What You Can Do About It

Have all your Salesforce reports automatically synchronized to your outside cloud storage provider like Dropbox, Box, Sharepoint, Google Drive, or Egnyte in an Excel format. It’s always up-to-date, and it’s a cinch to download to your on-premise location. And finally, it’s easy to share your reports with nothing more than a link.

Questions? Just contact us on any of our social channels, email us at info@cloudhq.net, or call us at 1 (888) 666-7439.

Should We Be Concerned About Consumerization Of IT?

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Cloud computing brings better collaboration and file-sharing

Cloud computing is the largest driving force behind consumerization of IT. In a work force that is mobile, working from remote locations that are scattered around various locations, employees need the flexibility to be able access company data. Often, there is the need to collaborate over a certain document or file, and this can be performed through cloud-based applications. The ‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) movement has produced employees that now expect t be able to use the device and cloud service of their choice for communication, file and information sharing and more while performing their duties.

A 2011 study, performed by IDG research, analyzed 260 large enterprises and found that 86% of the knowledge workers chose two features as the most important- the ability to collaborate with stakeholders and the availability of company information. There are many benefits to these abilities including better and more-informed decision-making, higher levels of productivity, better management, increased innovation and more. Cloud computing has brought a higher level of collaboration and file-sharing, as email, VPN and email are fast becoming obsolete for these functions.

The tools are great but not enough

For collaboration and file-sharing in the cloud, it has to be solid before it can be used for enterprises. This means there must be total security and control over all aspects of the company data in the cloud. There must be a complete administrative control plan that includes centralized control. There also must be integration with company apps. Availability is a must and uptime must be guaranteed. A solid backup and recovery plan that can handle any form of data loss must be in place.

Another survey by ESG found that 43% of those surveyed stated that they were hesitant to use the cloud because of security and/or privacy concerns. Another 32% were worried that they would no longer have control over the company data.

The future is now

Progressive companies now know that all business cannot be handled by employees on company property. The era of a remote, mobile workforce is upon us and the need for collaboration and information sharing with customers, suppliers, stakeholders, partners and others has never been a greater issue. Cloud-based file-sharing and collaboration offers flexibility, accessibility and productivity that has not been available before. Cloud computing is not so very futuristic anymore, it is quickly becoming the way computing is done in all phases. 

There is no sign that consumerization is going to go away and the old desktop PC and company laptop policies just aren’t going to cut it anymore. Mobile and cloud computing has enabled a trend, the BYOD trend, that has changed IT duties forever. IT must embrace this movement and work quickly to integrate with it to keep up with the ever-changing growth of this innovative movement.

Availability is essential

If employees are going to use cloud services and apps such as Dropbox, Box, Evernote, Google Drive and others, the information must always be readily available to them. But as we know, sometimes servers experience downtime and your company’s website and apps may be unavailable. And sometimes cloud servers go down as well, so your employee that is working from a remote location may not have access to the company data that he needs in order to perform his job. You should ask yourself a few of these questions:

  • If we have company data stored in Google Drive and the Google servers go down, can I switch to Dropbox (or other cloud storage service) to access my files?
  • Do we have a solid backup system that can protect against accidental and malicious deletion of files? What about bugs that can potentially cause data loss? Do we have a plan that allows us to consolidate data from multiple accounts in the cloud?
  • If our team or organization is using multiple cloud services (such as Google Drive AND Dropbox AND Evernote, etc.), do we have the ability to share data between these cloud services?

If you were unable to answer “Yes” to any of these questions, read on; for the solution is much easier than you may think.

How to consolidate and share data between multiple cloud services

The solution can be found in cloudHQ, a cloud backup and replication service that provides real-time replication of data between multiple cloud services. If you have data in Evernote and Dropbox and even in Google Drive, it can cause problems when you need to collaborate on files or documents and it makes it harder to search for certain files as you must perform multiple searches. But cloudHQ can take your data from Evernote and sync in to Dropbox. Then it can take your data in Google Drive and sync it to Dropbox. And vice-versa. This is especially helpful since Dropbox has the best file-sharing features of cloud services while Google Drive has the best collaboration features. And while Evernote may one of the best text managers out there, its export features leave something to be desired. But cloudHQ can export Evernote notes into PDF, Microsoft Word format and more.

So let’s say now your company data in Google Drive is being backed up to Dropbox. And all your Evernote notes are being backed up to Dropbox in PDF format. Now you have a complete secondary copy of all your data so if any data loss were to occur from one of your main cloud services, your data remains secure on the backup cloud account and can be restored quickly and easily. And if the servers from Google Drive go down, you can switch to Dropbox and continue working on files or documents.

When you move your company to the cloud, you must ensure high availability of your business and cloudHQ enables you to consolidate your data from multiple cloud services, and simplifies team collaboration.

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What Does The Recent Evernote Hacking Mean For Cloud Security?

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Cloud security is currently one of the hottest topics and one that many people and companies are concerned about. When Evernote was recently hacked the company forced 50 million users to reset their passwords. The Evernote hack was just one in a slew of recent incidents that have included Dropbox, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook. This makes it more important than ever for users that store data in the cloud to implement and maintain strict security and authentication measures.

Stronger passwords mean stronger cloud security

When you look at the top 25 worst passwords of 2012, you may be surprised to find that even in this day of more advanced technological information available to users that “password” is still the most commonly used password. Obviously, you don’t want to use a password that is on this list. But this is a small list. You should also check other lists to ensure your password does not appear on them, such as the 10,000 most common password list. In a study performed by the site, they found that 91% of people use a password that is found in the top 1000 most common passwords. With computers that claim to be able to able to process 348 billion passwords per second, a password in the top 1000 will not take long to crack. There is even a list of passwords that Twitter found to be too common and banned them from being used. If you want to find out how secure your password is, you can go to http://howsecureismypassword.net/ to find out how strong your password is and also approximately how long a desktop PC would take to crack it.

Tips for creating a secure password

If the weak passwords that are most commonly used surprise you, check out this analysis by Troy Hunt on the science of password selection. The longer the password, the harder it is to crack. It’s much better to have a long password that you can remember than to have a short password that may be more easily cracked.

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SplashData offers these tips to use when creating secure passwords:

  • Use passwords of eight characters or more with mixed types of characters. One way to create longer, more secure passwords that are easy to remember is to use short words with spaces or other characters separating them. For example, “eat cake at 8!” or “car_park_city?”
  • Avoid using the same username/password combination for multiple websites. Especially risky is using the same password for entertainment sites that you do for online email, social networking, and financial services. Use different passwords for each new website or service you sign up for.
  • Having trouble remembering all those different passwords? Try using a password manager application such as  1Password that organizes and protects passwords and can automatically log you into websites. The downside is that using a password manager isn’t always possible and it isn’t always practical either.

If your cloud storage providers have 2-factor authentication: Enable it

Some cloud storage providers such as Google Drive http://www.google.com/landing/2step/ and Dropbox support 2-factor authentication. Two-factor authentication is an approach to authentication which requires the presentation of two or more of the three authentication factors: a knowledge factor (“something the user knows”), a possession factor (“something the user has”), and an inherence factor (“something the user is”).
The basics of how it works: You enter your password as you would normally when signing in to the service. A code is then sent to your mobile phone or an app that you have preapproved. The code comes through instantly so there is no waiting. As soon as you enter your code, you have access to the account.

How does this protect you?

If a hacker gains access to your password (keylogger, sniffer, steals your laptop, etc.), he will still be unable to access your account without also having access to your mobile phone. Creating strong passwords, keeping your passwords secure and changing your password frequently (and especially at the first sign of any suspicious activity) can help prevent unauthorized access to your account. The 2-factor authentication makes it much harder for unauthorized users to access your account, thus your data remains safe.
Some instructions on how to setup Dropbox 2-factor authentication can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/help/363/en
And for Google Drive (and your Google mail and other other Google properties) you can find instructions here: http://support.google.com/accounts/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=180744

Protect cloud data with a secure backup from cloudHQ

Most unauthorized accesses happen because of weak passwords or other weak security measures. However, even with all possible protections in place, there is still the possibility that your account can be hacked. Hackers can delete your data, but even if the account is accessed, your data doesn’t have to be lost. image

CloudHQ uses a secure backup to create and maintain a second copy of all of your data. The replication is automatic and it operates silently in the background. It is also continuous replication which means it automatically updates in real-time as changes are made to files.

Let’s use an example. You have an Evernote account and want to use cloudHQ to protect your Evernote data. You simply create two Evernote accounts. One is your primary Evernote account and the other is your backup account. CloudHQ provides a continuous replication of all data from the primary Evernote account to the secondary Evernote account. If a hacker gains access to your primary account and deletes your data (including from Evernote trash), the backup account will still hold a complete second copy of all of your data.
Choosing a strong, secure password and implementing strong security measures can keep your cloud data protected from hackers. But if security fails and your cloud account is hacked, cloudHQ can be a lifesaver, as it will ensure that none of your data is lost.

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Specializing in email organization and team workflows, cloudHQ is an easy cloud app synchronization service used for backup, app integrations, and implementation of team workflows. To date, we sync over 5 million files a day, and service clients like HP, Gartner, and Uber.
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