There are faceless companies out there offering the same amount of storage and functionality, whether you choose to trust them or not, is an important decision. Reputable companies have tried and tested security systems to ensure that only you have access to your data. Who has accessВ to your data is another point to consider. So it is very difficult to know where your data actually resides, and the cloud provider may not necessarily disclose this. Many companies outsource their server farms toВ satelliteВ locations in order to reduce costs. The provider may be based in the US (for example), but their servers might be in China, or the UK, or anywhere else in the world. In terms of whereВ your data is stored, it is fairly safe to say that you will never truly know unless you do some digging.

This raises a number of questions: where is my data actually stored? Who has access to my data and is my data safe? Where is my data actually stored? These places are often called вЂњ server farmsвЂќ and are essentially vast warehouses filled with servers which are running 24/7/365.

Whether this is on flash or traditional hard drive storage, companies offering this service still need to have huge servers dedicated to storing your data. However, many people donвЂ™t realise that despite being held in the вЂњcloudвЂќ, your data still needs to be physically stored on a device somewhere. To take this example further, remember that you can log in and access your emails from any pc, any laptop, and any smartphone. None of those emails you send and receive is actually taking up space on your local hard drive, they are stored on the email providersвЂ™ servers: this is a form of cloud computing. If that all sounds a little far-fetched, think about an email service you are already using e.g. Nothing is stored on your local hard drive and it is accessible from any location, any device and at any time.

In a nutshell, cloud computing is all about storing andВ retrievingВ your personal (or corporate) data from your own little area on theВ Internet. Think of cloud computing and the first thing that comes to mind is usually a mainstream application like Google Drive, DropboxВ or iCloud, but there is a lot more to it than you might think.ДЇirstly we need to understand what cloud computing actually is.

Sitting on clouds ost safe