If you are planning to move your data to a cloud, then you need to encrypt them so as to offer optimal protection. In case of applications which permit sharing of files and there is only one person who will use a file, then with help of tools like TrueCrypt or 7-zip all files can be encrypted by you before moving them to cloud service.
And yes, as per your requirement, you need to share these files with others and this requires by others, that encryption software same as we have, others must also have same to access keys. It states that you must store those keys in a safe and secure mode by protecting them.
Limitation of using encryption is to know what it offers protection and what kind of risks it can bring in future. Now design a location where encryption can be done, where your data which is encrypted can be store and manner by which encryption keys can be stored and managed.
Peeking Inside
In a case where files are shared, to offer protection to your data, it is encrypted by you. There is your cloud hosting provider and you may believe same. You must be sure that your data is not surrendered by your provider and for this, you need to stop the search warrant which forces the provider to do the same. Data is encrypted must be stored on your personal computer, desktop or laptop and at provider which offers services to share the files. You must remember keys, otherwise, their loss can lead to a huge risk to your way.
Encryption Solutions
To encrypt data moving to the cloud, a number of solutions are available in the market.
Firstly, your CRM traffic will be filtered by distinct cloud hosting company and your customer data will be encrypted. And when this data is accessible by you, the same provider will decrypt same. Your data which is unencrypted will not store by your encryption provider for so long thus it needs to encrypted soon. But for a while, you may trust your providers.
Now you are using services in form of Infrastructure. It shows that at a cloud company your software is running on an implicit machine. Now need to think that what type of risk can be reduced by encryption.
In order to know this, first, see that your data is stored on a disk which is virtual on your virtual machine. This leads to a risk of accessing same by employees of cloud provider of whom you are using services. So, here encryption plays a significant role. Insider clones the risk and takes it so as to investigate further.
Risk Assessment
To assess the risk, hard disk must be encrypted in OS as your laptop hard disk is encrypted. This is easy to do in most of operating systems. However, a major issue is that how encryption key can get to machine considered as virtual when it boots. However, we are not discussing this here.
Now see data which is in motion. It’s quite simple. Data may receive protection in motion for internet traffic, by using HTTPS. Other examples of this are terminal traffic via telnet and using FTP transfer of files. These are old protocols by whom nothing is encrypted, passwords also. It is recommended stop using these and start making use of SSH and SFTP. I think your guess that in this protocol name, the full form of S is Secure.
At last, it is required not on a large scale, to arrange the things into proper lookout.