There is quite a fight for information. New laws, such as GDPR, CLOUD Act and others, instead of bringing clarity, add to the nervousness of businesses and ordinary Internet users.

The entry into force of the CLOUD Act had a negative impact on the reliability of the protection of personal information. Those companies that comply with GDPR principles in their work can also guarantee 100% protection against information leaks. We are no longer talking about the fact that the GDPR and the CLOUD Act are procedurally at odds with each other, and it is not clear how an organization will act when it receives a court order to release information about its customers.

Some time ago, cloud services gained popularity, thus, huge amounts of information are at a considerable distance from their owners. Practice has shown that SaaS solutions do not properly ensure data preservation either: it is enough to look at the results of DLA PIPER research to see this.

Cloud services are even more inconvenient

• Service resources are limited and cannot be scaled.

• Data from cloud services cannot be downloaded or copied to another location if needed.

• The owners of cloud services are not responsible for the loss of information.

• In the event of a service failure, there is a risk of complete data loss.

• The cloud user cannot influence the actions of the developers.

• The usage patterns of stored data appear opaque: there is no certainty that no one else has access to it.

The biggest drawback of cloud services is that such clouds also fall.

For example, March 2021 is notable for the fact that the services Teams, Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365 (from Microsoft) collapsed. In addition, in March, Oracle Loud did not function for one and a half hours – all 17 zones. Oracle attributed the incident to misconfiguration of public DNS servers.

October 2021 was also notable: on October 4, at 15:40 UTC, the famous Facebook* crashed for 7 hours, taking with it its daughters (Facebook messenger, Instagram*, WhatsApp, and Oculus), and on October 13, during scheduled maintenance, OVH collapsed – one of the largest European hosting providers.

In the field of marketing, there is an opinion that it is possible to overcome the problem only thanks to the use of its own independent secure systems of collecting and processing information. This point of view is followed by market leaders, realizing that the risk of information leakage is too high, and such an incident will significantly damage the company’s reputation.

The community is now in Telegram

Subscribe and stay up to date with the latest IT news

Sign up

Does the business have an alternative?

Private Cloud

A private cloud belongs to the category of cloud solutions, but the capabilities of such a service are intended for use by a specific organization. Private cloud is embedded either in the company’s own infrastructure or in a cloud designed for many users. The tool is in many ways more reliable than public clouds: a limited number of employees have access to information, which significantly reduces the likelihood of information leakage. Moreover, the private cloud user decides for himself which hardware and software to choose for his company and how to configure it. In private clouds, the possibilities of integration with third-party services have been expanded.

However, such a solution also has disadvantages:

• Slow scaling vs. public clouds.

• The product has a high acquisition and maintenance cost, typical for businesses with small volumes of data.

• There is an installation fee.

In-house development

If the company’s human and technical resources allow, the necessary software can be written “in-house”. The duration and success of such development will depend only on you.

There are many difficulties in finding and attracting competent development specialists so that the software fully meets your expectations. If you have such a team at your disposal, it will greatly simplify the task, if you manage to assemble it, you will find a solid foundation for future research. However, in-house development always has the risk of wasting time and money.

On the one hand, this decision allows you not to purchase third-party software and gives the company independence from vendors, and on the other hand, factors such as the duration of development, the probability of failure, the costs of developer staff and infrastructure maintenance, the need to constantly keep the software up-to-date should be taken into account state. Importantly, while your ideal solution is in development, you will have to resort to other ways of collecting, storing and processing data, with all their shortcomings and problems.

On-Premise

This option belongs to the category of server solutions. The customer buys a software package (a program and a license that gives the right to use it), and provides everything necessary for the correct functioning of the software (provides personal server equipment, provides support and administration).

Of course, on-premise is characterized by a large total cost of ownership and is often associated with confusing tariffs. In addition, there is some dependence on an external vendor for product improvement. In some industries, there are bureaucratic barriers to purchasing and implementing such a solution in the organization.

But it is worth noting the significant advantages of such a solution, which cover all the disadvantages of the previous two options, namely:

• The user receives a ready-made solution “here and now”.

• There is no problem of finding and paying software developers and technical support specialists – these tasks are performed by the vendor.

• The On-Premise solution has built-in integration with internal databases and third-party services.

At the same time, all principles of security and protection of personal data of customers were observed.

Altcraft Platform features: Private Cloud and On-Premise solutions

The needs of medium and large businesses are fully satisfied by modern digital platforms, such as the Altcraft Platform, which can function as a private cloud or on-premise solution. The use of a marketing automation platform eliminates the possibility of leaking confidential data of your customers, since the work with the data takes place directly inside the corporate network of the customer, without giving access to it to third parties.

CDP Altcraft Platform has the following advantages:

• The tariff system is clear and transparent: all modules are included in the tariff, the sent messages are unlimited, as well as the amount of data to be stored for the period of use.

• The scalable architecture is designed for large loads.

• There is no additional need to purchase commercial databases or OS.

• Developers refine and improve the platform at the request of users, taking into account their comments and wishes.

The reliability and effectiveness of the tool is confirmed by the results of Altcraft Platform’s cooperation with clients: banks, insurance and logistics companies, payment systems and online services.

We bring to your attention cases:

Adaptability, openness and focus on results – this is what distinguishes our platform.

Conclusion

A well-chosen solution will help save users’ personal data. The article lists three effective ways to overcome this problem: Private Cloud, In-House development and On-Premise solutions. Carefully evaluate all the pros and cons, analyze in which country the provider operates, under the jurisdiction of which laws it falls, and what are your own tasks in this field. Choose reliable tools and do not worry about the purity of your reputation.

*Social networks Facebook and Instagram are recognized as extremist and banned in Russia.