Why You Should Avoid Syncing Cloud Drives to Your Computer

Cloud storage has become a popular choice for organizations of all sizes to manage their data. It provides a secure, scalable, and accessible platform to store and share files with team members, clients and partners. However, syncing an entire organization's shared cloud drives to a work computer can be a bad idea.

In this blog post, we'll explore why syncing large amounts of data from your organization’s shared cloud drives to a work computer is a bad idea, and what can be done instead to ensure that your organization's data remains both secure AND accessible.

Security Risks

The first issue to consider when deciding whether or not to sync data from your cloud drive to a work computer is the security risks that it poses. Cloud storage providers invest heavily in security to ensure that their platform is secure from cyber-attacks and data breaches. However, when you download these files onto your work computer, you're essentially taking that data outside of the cloud storage platform, and onto a device that may not have the same level of security. 

If you sync data from your shared cloud drives to your work computer, you increase the risk of data breaches, hacking, and cyber attacks. Hackers often target personal computers as they are easier to hack than cloud storage providers' security measures. This means that if your computer gets hacked, all the sensitive and confidential data of your organization will be at risk.

Data Loss

Another issue to consider when syncing shared cloud drives is the potential loss of data. When working with cloud storage platforms, data is usually backed up and kept secure. However, when data is synced to a computer, it's susceptible to data loss, accidental deletion, and corruption. Computers can fail, get stolen, or experience natural disasters such as fires, floods, or power outages. This means that if you've synced an entire organization's shared cloud drives to your computer, you run the risk of losing all that data if you've made changes that aren't synced back to the cloud.

Storage Space

The third issue to consider is that syncing large amounts of data to your work computer can take up valuable storage space. If you have a small hard drive on your computer, syncing a lot of or all of the data on your shared cloud drives can quickly consume all your storage space, causing your computer to slow down, freeze, or crash.

There's also an inherent risk when your drive is too full of your operating system not being able to install important security updates and releases. As well as causing applications that cache data locally, like a web browser or email client such as Outlook, they will no longer function because it can't download any more data.

Selective Syncing

The best solution to these issues is to try and keep as many files as possible only stored in the cloud - without the need to download anything to your computer. However, if you absolutely need to download certain files on a regular basis, you can use selective syncing instead of syncing all of your shared cloud drives to your computer. Selective syncing is the process of choosing which folders and files to sync to your computer instead of downloading everything from the cloud. This ensures that you have access to the files you need without overwhelming your computer's storage space.

Using selective syncing can also help with security risks. By syncing only the necessary files, you can reduce the risk of data breaches, hacking, and cyber attacks. This is because you're only syncing the essential files to your computer, rather than all the files stored in the cloud. You should also not selectively sync any files that do pose a significant risk if they were to be lost or stolen, such as anything with personal identifying information.

Using selective syncing will also help to reduce the storage space used on your computer. By syncing only the necessary files, you can save valuable storage space on your computer, ensuring that it runs smoothly and efficiently.

In conclusion, syncing large amounts of data from shared cloud drives to a work computer can be a bad idea for several reasons, including security risks, potential loss of data, and limited storage space on computers. Instead of syncing everything, try to work from the cloud or if necessary use selective syncing, which is a much safer and more practical solution.