According to IDC, people now create and generate more than
1.8 zettabytes of data per year, so there’s plenty of data to lose. Yet, there are still huge numbers of businesses and individuals that don’t back up their data regularly. How many? Nearly
30% of consumers have never backed up their data, and of those that did,
20% hadn’t backed up the data on their computers even once in 2019. While individuals may be risking their precious personal files, businesses may be risking their very existence. With an
average 53% of a business’s sensitive files accessible to every employee, a majority are vulnerable to accidental, disastrous deletions, or worse, malicious internal or external attacks. That brings us to
World Backup Day. It’s a special day to spread the word about data integrity and automating backups. It’s a day to take action (and if you’re reading this after March 31, it’s still not too late). Whether you’re an individual or a business, here are some things to think about
For individuals, don’t just think about backing up your computer. You need to protect your data on all of your devices—laptops, phones, tablets, and other wireless devices—and you need to automate it, so you don’t have to think about it. At a minimum, back up to an external hard drive. That makes your data easy to retrieve if disaster strikes. But drives can fail, so back up your data to a cloud-based service, too, if you can. And, for complete confidence, where possible, back up your data to a local external drive, a cloud backup service, and to a second, securely-placed remote hard drive. That’s three layers of protection for your precious data!
Backup Best Practices for Individuals