The switch to cloud based solutions has become a world over phenomena with more and more hoteliers giving away legacy. Hoteliers across the globe have realised that cloud technology is cost effective, time saving and highly efficient.
But, when it comes to data, hoteliers worry about the safety and security of the data on cloud. Some of the common inhibitions are:
“Can the information saved on cloud servers be tampered?
Can the data be misused?
Can competitors gain access to the data?
And worst of all, what happens if all the data gets lost or a system crash occurs?”
As hotelier, one should be possessive of their data and why not? When you are investing in cloud technology you ought to know all about your data’s security.
Hotels are a big source of sensitive data comprising of credit card details, passport details, addresses of their guests, details of social security numbers, confidential reports, data about the hotel’s suppliers, financial details and more. Therefore, it’s important to ensure the safety of data.
Security is much higher in cloud based systems as the providers ensure that they keep their clients data completely safe and secure. Data security is given upmost importance as the companies use the best data centres and IAAS providers to keep the data innocuous.
Cloud based PMS providers assure:
– Data gets managed at high end data centres which have very powerful and comprehensive in-built data security systems.
– Data gets backed up almost every hour and uptime guaranteed by data centres is nothing less than 99%.
– Failover and redundancy data mechanisms are inbuilt so if one server goes down it switches over to a different server. If the location of one the servers face a natural disaster, the data is switched over to another server.
– Any data transferred over the wire is encrypted so there is no chance of anything being misused, there is complete accountability and audit trails of data access.
Such kind of security is low in legacy based solutions. Countries across the globe are being more and more proactive in ensuring that data security is given utmost priority especially since Governments have also started using cloud technology.
Did you know?
“In 2013, the US government adopted cloud services for US Army, Airforce, Navy, DOJ, USDA & Department of Education, making it the biggest endorsement for the cloud and an indicator for others to follow suit.”
“More than 60% of banks worldwide will process most of their transactions in the cloud by 2016.”
(Source: Hotelogix white paper)
Cloud Data Security has matured with more and more IAAS providers supporting it like Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure, Rackspace and IBM. These big giants have entered the market with the best in the breed data security features. The future belongs to cloud technology and even with such stringent safety measures in place already, security in the coming months shall become even more impenetrable.
Hotels should not think of data security as a concern when switching over to cloud, it should actually be looked as one of the main reasons of switching over, because data centres are actually the best possible custodians of data rather than any other in-house providers.
Read more on data security in our upcoming white paper on the rise of cloud PMS. If you would like to get a copy, simply drop in an email.