Dan's Take

Protecting Public Cloud Data

Connected Data Transporter 15 and 30 join a growing market of appliances for SMBs offering cloud security.

• By Dan Kusnetzky
• 03/23/2015

Connected Data Vice President of Marketing Jim Sherhart came by to introduce me to his company's private cloud sync and share appliances, the Transporter 15 and 30. It was a lively conversation, and I was immediately able to see how the company's smallest products would address some of the more difficult issues facing a mid-market company that needs to offer controlled, secure, anytime, anywhere access to its staff, consultants and even customers.

Transporter 15 and 30 are members of a growing family of server appliances and supporting software designed to give enterprises the flexibility and agility offered by public cloud services offerings, while still providing the necessary security and privacy. These systems work very much like the public storage offerings of Dropbox and Google Drive, but give IT administrators full control over the data.

The Transporter 15 is designed to support up to 15 users, the Transporter 30 up to 30 users. Connected Data offers larger and smaller server appliances to address the different needs of mid-market companies. The Transporter 15 can support up to 8TB of storage and the Transporter 30 can support up to 12TB of storage.

Here's how Connected Data describes these new appliances:

The Transporter 15 and Transporter 30 appliances deliver superior security benefits for on-premises cloud and BYOD devices. The systems support BYOD applications including Transporter Mac App, Transporter Windows App, Transporter iOS App and Transporter Android App. All Transporters are compatible with one another, so businesses can easily leverage any combination of appliances to achieve their file sync and share business objectives.

While speaking with Sherhart, I couldn't help but think of the issues my company faces when working with contractors and customers. We'd love to be able to make critical data files, documents, and spreadsheets available to staff and contractors. Our challenge is that we often accept proprietary or secret information under the terms of nondisclosure contracts.

This means putting this data into a public, off-site cloud storage service would be problematic. There's simply too much of a chance that, for example, the data will be stolen or the services provider will access it for their own purposes. In such cases, my company will be exposed to litigation. This is a headache I don't need.

Dan's Take: Cloud Benefits Without Cloud Hassles
Listening to Sherhart, I found myself thinking about how one or more of the Connected Data Transporters would quickly and easily address the needs for allowing remote access to proprietary or secret data from most major types of laptops, desktops, tablets or smartphones without also exposing the company to litigation. My IT administrators would still have full control over where the data is stored, who has access to it, what type of access is allowed and when.

Because my company would actually own and operate these server appliances, I'd have no additional concerns about security, the service supplier granting access to our client's data without notifying us, or having difficulty complying with my contractual requirements for both data and financial governance.

I suspect that if you speak with the company, you'll find yourself imagining what the products could do for you, too.