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Why a Hosted Desktop is More Secure Than a Local PC
By : Synextra

There’s been a strongly-held belief in IT for some time now – that traditional, local IT is more secure than cloud-based IT (such as our Hosted Desktop.) That myth is starting to crumble, as studies prove that data location is less important than data accessibility. Location does not equal control and control does not equal security.

The current state of PC security:

Whether you’re a charity, an agile startup or a large and well-established enterprise, you’re going to use PCs to get work done – if only sparingly. From creating and storing digital documents to optimizing workflows and ensuring organisation, we’ve been using PCs in the workplace at an ever-increasing rate. There isn’t much which isn’t digitized in one way or another now. But what happens if that data falls into the wrong hands?

Let’s look at some recent attacks:

HEI Hotels & Resorts Group (aka Marriot Hotels)

Twenty hotels belonging to the HEI Hotels and Resorts Group (who operate a number of hotel chains, including most notably Marriot hotels) have been the victim of Point of Sale (PoS) malware. The perpetrators would more than likely have installed this malware remotely. This means they wouldn’t even have to step foot on the premises. A worrying thought to say the least.

Sage

Sage was also the victim of a recent data breach, where an internal log-in may have compromised nearly 300 UK firms. They’re best known for finance management software, such as Sage 200.

Apple

Apple recently had to patch a triple-threat of severe, zero-day vulnerabilities, after attackers went for our beloved Apple devices. And it’s no surprise, considering we spend so much time on our mobiles and now integrate them into our daily workflows. We send and receive business emails from our smartphones, we log-in to business apps and even store our business passwords on our phones.

So what can you do to protect your data from external and internal threats? We believe the cloud has the answer.

Cloud-based solutions are cost-efficient, collaborative, and, more often than not, more secure to operate (than local PCs)”

Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security, Google Apps – ComputerWeekly

Cloud security – It’s more than just cybercrime

To prove his point, Eran mentioned a flood that swept through Italy whilst he was in Milan. Unfortunately, it knocked out several key data centres in the region. Even though it affected a lot of local businesses, Google’s customers suffered no disruption to their services.

That’s because Google has the right people and processes in place to deal with such threats to users’ data. Top security experts monitor the data centres 24/7/365. It’s their job to redirect traffic to other data centres, if one ever unexpectedly goes down. Here at Synextra, we implement a similar system to protect our customer’s data. This kind of redundancy is incredibly difficult and costly to replicate with local servers and PCs.

Breakdown – Hosted Desktop vs Local PC

In this section, we’ll break down the differences between traditional desktop PCs and new, cloud-based Hosted Desktops with our SlideShare:

Why a Hosted Desktop is more secure than a local PC from Sean Worrall

Article By:
Synextra
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