For over a decade, March 31 has been promoted as World Backup Day. This annual event reminds people to back up their data before they lose it, by accident or malice, and make themselves an AprilFool. According to the World Backup Day website, 21% of people have never backed up their data, 29% of data losses are caused by accidents and 30% of all computers are infected with malware.
Backing up your data can help prevent that data from loss in the event that the computer the data is stored on is damaged or stolen. It may also help you recover your data if your computer is a victim of malware, such as ransomware (particularly if your backups are immutable—or not able to be modified, such as by encryption of the backed up data). Jeff Costlow from ExtraHop says that “Ransomware attacks have become increasingly common. In fact, a recent ExtraHop survey revealed that 85% of organizations have fallen prey to ransomware in the past five years.”
History
The observation originally started as World Backup Month, and later changed to World Backup Day. Maxtor, a company specializing in hard drives, initiated this annual celebration. Now taking place every year on March 31, World Backup Day reminds us to make multiple copies of our digital treasures, or risk losing them all forever. The day also serves to instill better online and technological practices. Considering how reliant humans are on technology now, we still haven’t cultivated habits that will ensure that our information and personal data are secure and safe. It is important to backup your data for your best Canada online casino account too.
It happens to all of us — that one precious photo or video that was captured to immortalize a moment, but it doesn’t exist anymore. Broken hard drives, hacked computers, erratic phones, or any other glitch that erased irretrievable items, we’ve all experienced it.
World Backup Day falls on the day before April Fools Day, which is perfect timing. Pranksters and hackers are prone to play jokes on unsuspecting individuals, so it’s better to be safe than sorry. The holiday was observed for the first time in 2011 and over time, has become that one day when we won’t say “we’ll back it up tomorrow.”
What Are Backups and Why Are They Important?
A backup is a separate copy of your important and sentimental digital files and information. Storing all that data in one place, like a personal computer or smartphone, can prove unsafe. Creating another copy of that data through a backup will ensure that it’s stored and kept safe somewhere else should your device get wiped or stolen.
It’s important to recognize that data loss isn’t something that only happens to huge corporations or unsuspecting victims in spy movies. Everyone is susceptible to data loss or theft and backing up that data is an easy step to protect all your information and prevent cybercriminals from taking what isn’t theirs.
Data Storage 101
Data is one of the most important assets in the modern world. As we illustrated earlier, people collect countless files that contain valuable information they want to keep safe. Luckily, there are two common and inexpensive ways that a user can store their data and their ever-important backups. Several methods are being used by best online casinos for real money.
Cloud storage
Although “the cloud” became a major buzzword years ago, its definition is still cloudy for some folks. The cloud exists in remote data centers that you can access via the internet. Any data you’ve uploaded to the cloud exists on dedicated servers and storage volumes housed in distant warehouses, often situated on campuses full of such warehouses. Data centers are owned by cloud service providers, who are responsible for keeping the servers up and running.
To keep your data physically safe from theft and destruction, and to make sure it’s available whenever you want to access it, data centers run extensive cooling systems to keep the electronics from overheating and have at least one backup generator in case of power outages. But how do they make sure that this data is secure in the cybersphere? Cloud systems use authentication processes like usernames and passwords to limit access, and data encryption to protect data that is stolen or intercepted. However, it’s important to remember that passwords can be hacked. Typically, the service provider holds the encryption keys to your data, meaning that rogue employees could, theoretically, access it. Likewise, your data could also potentially be searched and seized by government entities.
This begs the question: Trust or don’t trust? Because cloud storage companies live and die by their reputation, you can rest assured knowing that they go to great lengths to use the most advanced security techniques and provide the most reliable service possible. To help ensure the security of your data should you choose to store or back it up to the cloud, keep anything truly sensitive in a private cloud behind a firewall.
External hard drive
With an external hard drive, you can manually back up all your data and files yourself onto a physical device that you can access anytime. These drives are a reliable way to achieve data redundancy. An external hard drive doesn’t rely on internet access like cloud-based services and is an easy fix when transferring data to a new device. However, using external hard drives requires a more hands-on approach to backing up your data. It’s your responsibility to regularly perform backups yourself and store your hard drive in a safe location. While cloud solutions offer huge amounts of storage, storage space on hard drives are limited, so you may have to purchase more than one device. Look for an external drive with at least a terabyte of space to accommodate all your data, which tends to accumulate quickly.
