The Difference Between Cloud and Hosted Services

The difference between cloud and hosted services is the location of the servers running the service. “Hosted services” is the general term for technology services using infrastructure located outside the service receiver’s physical location. This can be at the vendor’s physical location or can be hosted on the cloud. “Cloud services” refers to a specific subset of hosted services that utilize a “cloud” vendor.

What are Hosted Services?

“Hosted services” is the general term for technology services with infrastructure located outside the recipient’s physical location. The servers facilitating this service may be on-site at the vendor’s physical location—these are considered “traditional” hosted services—or maybe on the cloud. Cloud-hosted solutions mean the infrastructure is located at a cloud vendor’s data center.

A traditional hosted services provider owns and operates the infrastructure at a private location. These hosted services are accessed by the customer through a direct network connection, such as a virtual private network (VPN), remote desktop, etc.).

Hosted services can include anything from email to SaaS, storage, monitoring, and more. The infrastructure that supports hosted services includes software, network capacity, storage, hardware, servers, and networking components. This infrastructure is used to deliver services to offsite clients.

There is a wide range of hosted services available. Common examples of common hosted services include:

Email
Software (SaaS)
Website hosting
File hosting
Security
Virtual server hosting

What are Cloud Services?

Cloud services are a subset of hosted services specifically hosted on the cloud. This means the hardware, network, storage, and composite solutions are from a cloud vendor.

One important differentiator of this classification of hosted services is that these resources are distributed and delivered to multiple users simultaneously. A private server hosted by a vendor and accessed by a client via VPN, then, would not qualify as cloud hosting since the service itself is non-collaborative.

Examples of common cloud hosting services include:

Cloud computing
Software (SaaS)
Cloud desktops
Cloud storage

Benefits of Cloud Services

The biggest benefit of cloud services compared to traditional hosted services is the scalability of solutions while remaining relatively affordable. With cloud services, the expenses related to the equipment and maintenance of the data center is spread across hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other clients.

Cloud services are usually incredibly scalable since it doesn’t take the implementation of additional resources or servers for a cloud vendor to accommodate increasing data needs. It only takes allocating additional data to the client.

Cloud services are also more likely to be up-to-date in speed and security measures than traditional hosted solutions. Since cloud vendors rely on a large number of clients to drive revenue, they must take extra care to ensure the safety and security of their client’s information. This is often one of the best ways to ensure your technology is protected from potential threats.

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Would you like to learn more about how cloud services may speed up the speed and reliability of your hosted services, helping to increase your business productivity and security? Contact Network Coverage today for a free cloud assessment.

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Cybersecurity Threats for SMBs in 2019

An increasingly digital world has made it easier than ever to support small and mid-sized businesses. However, this technological convenience comes with a price. Cybersecurity threats not only put small to mid-sized businesses at risk of having information stolen or misused; they also run a significant risk of catastrophic data loss that can disrupt or destroy a business.

Below, we discuss the current threats, perceptions, and prevention measures small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) experience with cybersecurity threats in 2019.

The Biggest Cybersecurity Threat to SMBs

While negative impact on reputation can be crippling for large businesses facing cybersecurity threats, for small to mid-sized companies, data loss is the scariest prospect. This is because 93% of companies that suffer a catastrophic data disaster go out of business within 2 years.

Data loss is about more than lost productivity. It also means the loss of contact or client information, files or programs, accounting records, inventory lists, and more. Because of the implications of data loss, it can be devastating to the business to experience data loss. This is why data loss protection, backup, and disaster recovery are so important regardless of business size.

In addition to a fear of data loss, small to mid-sized businesses also report a significant fear of losing customers—due to inefficiency, loss of trust, or inability to provide services—as well as a lesser fear of damaging the company’s reputation.

Preparing for a Cybersecurity Threat

Cybersecurity threats are becoming more and more advanced, making them increasingly difficult to prevent. Common cyberthreats include:

Phishing
Scareware
Pretexting
Rogue
Ransomware

These cybersecurity threats combine with human error, lack of training, and outdated passwords for and insecure SMB digital environment.

52% of SMBs report feeling helpless to defend themselves against modern cybersecurity threats, with the majority feeling as though they do not have the adequate in-house skills to protect themselves.

While taking steps to prevent and SMB against modern cybersecurity threats in 2019 feels daunting for nearly half of SMBs, the reality is that there are many flexible and affordable cybersecurity services that can help to prevent these attacks and mitigate catastrophic business failure. These steps include:

Backup & disaster recovery systems
Security & risk mitigation
Cyberthreat analysis
Training personnel in best practices (changing passwords, avoiding phishing scams, etc.)

Learn more about how companies like Network Coverage can help provide affordable cybersecurity options to SMBs. Learn more.

The Real Cost of a Cyber Attack to SMBs

There are several figures about how much money recovering from a cybersecurity threat actually costs. There seems to be a general consensus that this final number is somewhere between $54,000 – $149,000.

However, the fiscal cost is only 35% of the impact. Additional costs include the time and effort in recovering from the cybersecurity disaster and data loss.

SMBs are Prioritizing Cyberthreat Prevention

In 2019, small to mid-sized businesses are prioritizing prevention and disaster recovery as a priority for their company. 89% of SMBs view cybersecurity as one of the top five priorities in their organization, with 79% planning to invest more in cybersecurity over the next 12 months.

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Learn more about cybersecurity threats, prevention, and recovery by speaking to an SMB cybersecurity expert today.

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