If you want to start a document on your laptop and revise it on your phone, you can. If you'd like to listen to your music library from either your tablet or your work computer, you can do that, too. Gone are the days of being tethered to a single device. The reason for this: the cloud. Simply put, cloud computing involves storing data and applications on remote servers and accessing them via the Internet rather than saving or installing them on your personal computer. You can use the cloud to house text files, photos, videos, music and the like, either as primary storage or backup storage, often for free or for a nominal price. In this age of Web mail, social networking, online bill paying, automatic phone backups, multiplayer online gaming and video streaming, a lot of us are already performing a variety of personal and business activities in the cloud, whether we realize it or not.

Many businesses are using the cloud to handle some or all of their information technology needs as a more inexpensive, efficient and flexible alternative to purchasing, running and maintaining in-house computing equipment and software. But the cloud is not without its pitfalls. Here are five factors that can affect, and sometimes impede, your ability to access your data. There are several types of cloud service, and which one you are using can affect how and how much you can interact with your data. Three common categories are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). With SaaS, you are simply accessing software over the Internet that is offered and maintained entirely by the cloud provider. The type of software can include e-mail, content management systems, productivity software and business applications. SaaS requires the least amount of setup on the end-user's part, but also provides the least amount of control and flexibility as far as system functionality, and what can be uploaded or downloaded from the cloud.

You don't have direct access to the backend servers, but you have more control over what you can do on them. With IaaS, the cloud host provides computing resources including physical or virtual servers, storage space and networking capabilities over which you have a lot of control. You are basically renting access to a portion of a data center's network and servers, and you can install and upload anything you want to them. You don't have the responsibility of maintaining or upgrading equipment, but do have to configure the servers and set up any software you might need. An IaaS service can be a public, private or hybrid cloud. Public clouds are shared by a number of users who select and access service over the Internet; private clouds allow users to have dedicated servers on a private network; hybrid clouds involve a little of both. The types are not always mutually exclusive, as an SaaS provider might house their software on PaaS or IaaS cloud services, and a PaaS host might use the services of an IaaS provider.

This potential nesting means that problems of a provider you don't even know you're using can cause issues with getting to your data or services. And which type of service your company is using may determine things like who you contact when you have a problem -- someone in your own IT department versus a third party. It also impacts things like security, which, as you will see next, can affect your ability to work with your data. Security isn't just about protecting your identity and financial information, although those are important. It is also key to preserving the integrity of and access to your data and applications in the cloud. Things like firewalls, encryption, backups, isolation of resources, the strength of authorization at user interfaces and screening of employees and other customers can determine who can get to your resources, how they can do so and what they can do with them. There are many disruptive things that a malicious intruder can do.

A denial of service attack, which involves bombarding a system to the point where it is inaccessible for normal usage, can render your cloud services temporarily unavailable. A hijacked account could lead to your data or business transactions being redirected for ill purposes, or loss of access to your own services. A compromised system could allow a virtual machine housing your applications and information to be migrated to a malicious server, leading to exposure of information and possible loss of data. Malicious software (malware) can infect the system and disrupt operations, or even compromise your home or work computer if it spreads.Even if an attack doesn't cause you to lose data or access, any security breach will likely lower your comfort level with storing or retrieving information from the cloud. Anything accessible via the Internet is vulnerable. But the tougher a cloud provider's security and the better its ability to detect and recover from breaches, the less likely you'll be to lose access, data or peace of mind.

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