Associate
Good afternoon everyone,
It's been a while since I've posted here but I thought that the good folks of the OCUK forums are some of the best people to help me with this little quandary that I'm having.
Todays subject is what is largely becoming the go-to model for software companies in so much that all of our data is on their servers, making things really easy for us to get to, as long as we have an internet connection. No more VPNs back home or LogMeIn!
Now, as a bit of an experiment, a couple of years ago I brought everything in-house... literally... I host my own web and mail servers, have a synology virtual machine running, gitlab virtual, I even run FreePBX, primarily to see off cold callers who don't have the ability to press '1' to continue.
It was all quite well timed with the Snowdon Revelations of data privacy and information assurance in general (Security, Availability, Integrity, I think there's one more but I forget...). Needless to say, I was quite proud that I could point to a box and say "all of my data is there".
That's not to say I'm completely naive, I'm well aware that anything that is transmitted over the internet (email is a prime example) shouldn't be considered secure unless you've encrypted it yourself (PGP, for example). However I currently find myself between a rock and a hard place, hence this post...
I've started using a couple of cloud-based applications, Todoist being the most prominent and I've had an Evernote account trickling away but have been reluctant to do much with it because data is not encrypted at rest. There are even more applications that I'd like to delve into and link together in one big IFTTT spaghetti mess, but I struggle with the concept of my data not being in my control. Dropbox is another example of an incredibly useful service and it encrypts data at rest, but they have the encryption keys so could decrypt my data at will. I know of several zero knowledge services but they don't have the same level of integration with other services as Dropbox.
I hasten to add, I've not got anything to hide (who's really interested in my photos, meter readings or what I'm buying my mum for Christmas?!), but I've not got anything to show either. An argument has been well made to me by my brother... if it's good enough for the majority of other people, why not me? Though I am fairly certain that I will be staying clear of the data-mining google for the foreseeable future.
So, good people of OCUK. Help a paranoid recluse out! Am I being far too over the top with my thinking here? What cloud services do you use? What have your experiences been?
It's been a while since I've posted here but I thought that the good folks of the OCUK forums are some of the best people to help me with this little quandary that I'm having.
Todays subject is what is largely becoming the go-to model for software companies in so much that all of our data is on their servers, making things really easy for us to get to, as long as we have an internet connection. No more VPNs back home or LogMeIn!
Now, as a bit of an experiment, a couple of years ago I brought everything in-house... literally... I host my own web and mail servers, have a synology virtual machine running, gitlab virtual, I even run FreePBX, primarily to see off cold callers who don't have the ability to press '1' to continue.
It was all quite well timed with the Snowdon Revelations of data privacy and information assurance in general (Security, Availability, Integrity, I think there's one more but I forget...). Needless to say, I was quite proud that I could point to a box and say "all of my data is there".
That's not to say I'm completely naive, I'm well aware that anything that is transmitted over the internet (email is a prime example) shouldn't be considered secure unless you've encrypted it yourself (PGP, for example). However I currently find myself between a rock and a hard place, hence this post...
I've started using a couple of cloud-based applications, Todoist being the most prominent and I've had an Evernote account trickling away but have been reluctant to do much with it because data is not encrypted at rest. There are even more applications that I'd like to delve into and link together in one big IFTTT spaghetti mess, but I struggle with the concept of my data not being in my control. Dropbox is another example of an incredibly useful service and it encrypts data at rest, but they have the encryption keys so could decrypt my data at will. I know of several zero knowledge services but they don't have the same level of integration with other services as Dropbox.
I hasten to add, I've not got anything to hide (who's really interested in my photos, meter readings or what I'm buying my mum for Christmas?!), but I've not got anything to show either. An argument has been well made to me by my brother... if it's good enough for the majority of other people, why not me? Though I am fairly certain that I will be staying clear of the data-mining google for the foreseeable future.
So, good people of OCUK. Help a paranoid recluse out! Am I being far too over the top with my thinking here? What cloud services do you use? What have your experiences been?
