I bought a small CPA firm and will be moving there next week. Apparently, it is a paperless office with all the tax information stored in the Cloud. I have no idea how it works as I've used the traditional paper storage my entire life.

It's hard to teach an old dog new tricks but I hear it's pretty simple and since it is in place, I have no choice but to learn how it all works. I think it would be harder to convert back to paper than just learning how this whole cloud thing happens.

Well I hope that never gets hacked....

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Long Chile was a silly place.

dropbox is the shiz

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_________________________________
I'll be what I am
A solitary man

I use Google drive for a decent amount of stuff.

Well I hope that never gets hacked....

No kidding, That will be my first question when I talk to the IT guys.

I work for a AmLaw 100 law firm and we've switched to the cloud. Can't help you on the technical part since we have a large IT dept. to deal with that but client confidentiality and cyber security are very big requirements which they have covered.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Amazon, Google, Microsoft....start with any of those and you should be problem free.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

I asked about google drive, and i was told that google was the subject of a lawsuit because they were appropriating content to use as they saw fit from individual accounts. Have you any insight as to that?

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___________________________________________________
Taco cat spelled backwards is....taco cat.

I work for a AmLaw 100 law firm and we've switched to the cloud. Can't help you on the technical part since we have a large IT dept. to deal with that but client confidentiality and cyber security are very big requirements which they have covered.

As I mentioned I have no clue how it works but my assumption is that with tax returns served on the Cloud, the internal controls better be pretty good. I keep thinking it will be a hard adjustment because I don't even like to read things on the computer. I read books (those things with 2 covers and paper) and newspapers (those things that are "black and white and read all over"). Even when there are articles online, I print them off to read so going paperless will be like me moving from 1980 to 2018 overnight.

Oh yeah - I still print most everything out to read/proof. And I still keep some hard copy files. It's a learning curve for sure! One thing to beware of is that people will keep "everything" whether they need to or not because it's easy.

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clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

Never heard that. I have been using Amazon and Google for years now for photos/files without incident.

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"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."

Dropbox and Box are two pretty popular cloud-based storage companies, I used Box more recently and it had an app that was easy to use.

I use Carbonite. Mainly to backup pics on my laptop. For ~$60 a year I know if my computer dies I don't lose all of my kids' baby pictures. It is worth it.

Be prepared for your eyes to ache. Reading on a screen all day at work exaccerbates eye fatigue.

I'd been wondering about the security of google drive, whether to move my digital tax copies there, or to store an electronic copy of passwords there. Presently there are a couple of passwords I store in paper in the house, as I'm really unsure where is a good safe place to keep these ones w/ bigger potential financial impact and they are infrequently enough used that I don't remember them.

As for digital pictures, those have been backed up to cd, with 2nd copies of pre-2010 stuff in my desk at work. Now all I need to do is squirrel away a cd-rom drive so I can actually access the files using a data access mechanism no longer supported by my work computer...

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To breathe, to feel, to know I'm alive.

I haven't found anything definitive on the google drive content appropriation/security question. I use it for all data storage across all platforms, and I love it. All of my photos back up to drive automatically every time my phone is connected to wifi, and I use it to create and store all documents, personal and private. You can upload instantly from gmail/inbox, and the app has a document scanner function that I use almost daily for receipts and other things that would take up a shit ton of space in a filing cabinet, and that you'd have to search for for hours if you did.

Security is always a concern, but man, it's just so easy and integrated if you work in the google ecosystem (calendar, gmail/inbox, photos, etc), I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't use it otherwise.

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The devil made me do it the first time, second time I done it on my own - W

I use OneDrive (personal) for all my home data, and OneDrive for Business on my work data. Both can be accessed on my PC, my tablet and my IPhone. It is convenient to access saved documents from work on the PC and pull them up on the phone when traveling or in meetings. The phone app allows access to both cloud drives in one app. The desktop uses a pairing function to store/save documents both local and in the cloud using the file folder and resyncs them if I'm off wifi for a bit.

For that there is Amazon Prime photo backup, or a free Shutterfly account with auto uploader app.
Spreads your photos around, so less chance of losing all 34,000 kid photos.
Heck I even have 'em all on an external hard drive because wifey would be pissed if they disappeared.

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RayGovett
Hughson CA
Be Prepared-- Strike Swiftly -- Who Dares Wins- Without warning-"it will be hard. I can do it"

I started a few years back w SugarSync as my main backup. Worked well, customer service the few times I had problems was great. I use G-Drive for a few things as well as whatever it is that Microsoft has for collaborative projects. Last year I switched to DropBox as my main backup- more space for slightly more than SugarSync. I've also found the apps very intuitive for Apple products. If I had to pick one to use exclusively it would be Dropbox.

I'm using onedrive, saved my ass once when this POS laptop bailed on me. If I hadn't backed up my photos on the cloud I would have lost all of them.

Key words they must utter: IPSec tunnel, site to site VPN, rotating keys, no public access.

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Next races on the schedule: none at the moment