For those of you unfamiliar with the term “cloud computing,” what follows is the simplest definition I’ve found, from CNN Tech:
Broadly speaking cloud computing refers to outsourcing data once stored on privately owned computers. If you have an email account or are on a social networking site, like Facebook, you are using a cloud platform. The data is stored on servers operated by someone else, which means that data is subsequently available to use anywhere there is an Internet connection.
There’s a whole variety of cloud services available that will allow you to store your vital documents online. But the big question is: Should you take advantage of such services?
The short answer is that there are pros and cons. One major benefit is the ability to maintain more or less permanent copies of your vital information. Even if you lost your Life At Hand® Organizer, Traveler, and Roamer, you’d still have access to those documents on the cloud site.
Another benefit is that you can access your documents anywhere with Internet. This can be quite handy when traveling, for instance.
A third benefit is the ability to share these documents with others, and even allow others to manage them. Someone with Alzheimer’s, for instance, may choose to give a family member the password to the cloud site in order to be able to keep track of and update medical and other records.
The only real potential con of using a cloud site comes mainly in the area of security and privacy. What if someone hacks the site and gains access to your vital information? Over the past couple of years, as cloud computing has been both expanded and refined, expert opinion seems to be shifting from warning about the security dangers to recommending cloud computing as the safest way to store your data, as in this article at Mashable Business. In fact, more and more large companies are even choosing to store sensitive data through cloud services.
Obviously, it’s important to choose the most secure cloud service possible. You can find a helpful comparison of five of the best cloud services here.