The big buzz today is about “moving to the cloud”. But there are plenty of businesses out there who are afraid to put their customer data on the cloud. Their big concern is whether their data would be secure on the cloud and the perceived higher probability of data theft.
Now this is a legitimate fear for a lot of senior managers and business owners. Their customer data is their life blood and letting it fall into the wrong hands could have a lot of bad consequences.
But there are some serious reasons why managing customer data inside your own four walls is actually less “secure” than having it on the cloud.
Cloud CRM is actually safer than your office network.
Yes, I hear that disbelieving snort. But here’s why this is actually true.
- Most data theft is committed by internal employees. And for your internal employees, it’s much simpler to copy the entire database from an internal server to which they have physical access. With data in the cloud, your internal employees never have direct access to the database. There’s a lot more effort and time involved in getting data from a cloud service provider. And most cloud service providers have logs of data access. So you could actually see if someone has tried to access your data directly.
- It’s much tougher for a competitor to access a reputable cloud CRM provider’s network. For the cloud service provider, the security of your data is of utmost importance. You might have a firewall in place. But any decent hacker would be able to get past that. Most CRM providers have multiple layers of security in place and have state-of-the-art intrusion detection systems in place.
- Cloud CRM providers have highly redundant systems in place. You are much more likely to have your internal networks, servers, databases fail than would a cloud provider. Since the cloud CRM provider is hosting data for multiple customers, they would have multiple layers of redundancy built as also fault tolerance for hardware, software and Internet failures.
- Economies of scale. The costs of redundancy and security is probably beyond most small to medium businesses even if they had the expertise to implement these. But for the reputable cloud CRM provider, their entire business depends on the ability to provide reliable,secure access to customers. With multiple customers paying for the service, the cloud CRM provider has not only the desire but the motivation to ensure that your data is safe.
Cloud equivalent to your bank vault.
Keeping your data in-premise in your office as opposed to with a reputed cloud CRM provider is like keeping your money under your mattress rather than in a bank. Just as for the bank, the safety and security of your money is paramount, so is the safety and security of your customer data for the cloud CRM provider.
In addition, most reputable cloud CRM providers only allow a specific user to see data in a territory that they have access to, never to the complete data. Also, you can decide which of your users can export data.
Data privacy and security continue to be topics of discussion. Do your due diligence and pick the right cloud service provider for your CRM. Ensure that you maintain your data with the right access to the right people. Benefit from your cloud CRM provider’s experience and maturity in handling data security and access issues.