Protection against data espionage through encryption

Hardly anyone likes it when a hacker, competitor or the state is secretly reading along!

The scandal surrounding the global data espionage program of the US intelligence agency NSA has unsettled users of online services throughout Europe. Many users of cloud services are wondering whether their data is still safe from spying. If you use cloud services and want to do something about it, you should never back up your data to the cloud unencrypted. Tools such as Langmeier Backup encrypt backup data securely and protect it from being spied on by unauthorized persons.

Security risks in the cloud

The early summer of 2013 was dominated by the NSA spying scandal. Beyond political irritations between the governments of European countries and the USA, the issue at stake is nothing less than the data protection of several hundred million users who are active on social networks or use web-based services. Of course, this also affects popular cloud services such as Microsoft SkyDrive and Google Drive. Users rely on the providers and worry about the availability of their data in the cloud. What many people don't consider, however, is that the data is stored in the cloud without encryption. Using the cloud therefore poses a certain security risk that needs to be minimized. Cloud services that generate keys on their servers cannot offer reliable protection. The user has no control over the encryption because the generated key is also located on the cloud server.

Encrypted backups for greater data security

In IT, "data security" is always concerned with two areas. On the one hand, it means the availability and recovery of data structures after a defect or failure of the hard disk storage and, on the other, protecting data from unauthorized access. While the first topic can be dealt with using backup software solutions, the second is a case for encryption software. Ideally, the backup solution should also be capable of encryption, as more and more users expect backup systems that back up to the cloud to not only store data reliably, but also to encrypt it securely.

With Langmeier Backup Business and Langmeier Backup Server, two solutions are available that perform a backup of the data inventory and back up the data in encrypted form to Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Drive and other clouds. The solutions not only encrypt the backup files, but also the data transfer itself. This means double protection when backing up to the cloud. Dangers can also lurk on local network servers and require secure encryption. Langmeier Backup includes a solution for 256-bit encryption of Zip files and thus offers maximum security even for locally backed up files. Provided that a secure password is used, the encryption is definitely unbreakable. Neither in the cloud nor locally.

Conclusion

Users should never store their data directly in the cloud, not only to protect it from spyware from any secret services, but also as a matter of principle, but should back it up to the cloud in encrypted form with Langmeier Backup. Both in the cloud and in local networks, Langmeier's backup solutions offer protection against spying of any kind thanks to innovative encryption algorithms.