Despite the many warnings and reports of data lost for a variety of reasons, ranging from disasters, equipment failure, malware attacks through to security breaches and malicious damage, consumers and companies are still taking unnecessary risks. Most data being stored by companies is extremely important for their continued operation and any loss of data could result in employees being unable to work and may result in them ceasing to trade.
It is alarming how many consumers and companies do not understand the risks involved with not using a backup strategy. Such complacency is highly likely to result in data being lost, although it may be years before any problems do occur. This is almost akin to playing a game of Russian Roulette with your data.
The biggest issue facing computer users right now tend to be related to attaching a computer to a network. It is important that your security installed on all networked computers is fully up-to-date and working correctly. This should not only give protection against malware, but also protect your system from being accessed by unauthorised persons. It is recommended that passwords are regularly changed, even though it tends to be unpopular with most computer users.
The majority of companies do have a backup strategy in place, but it is important to consider if it is being used correctly. Any media to which data is being backed up, should be held off-site, so that in the event of a disaster, such as a fire or flood that media should remain safe.
It also important to ensure that your data is not being backed up to just a single piece of media, such that the previous backup is overwritten. The media should be used in rotation, which should help guard against problems resulting from files being corrupted, but not noticed immediately. All backup media should also be regularly replaced as it only has a finite lifespan beyond which it should be archived.
The use of online storage, such as cloud services should also be researched properly, before your important data is entrusted to a server which is being maintained by a third party. The amount of data which needs to be backed up and length of time required to restore it should also be estimated as for most networks, it will take several days to restore only a few terabytes of data.
