[norton-video:youtube:1]
Spring has finally sprung, and it’s that time of year where a lot of us clean, organize, and simplify our lives. What a lot of people don’t realize is the importance of applying those principles to our digital data as well. We collect, organize and store the things in our lives that are important to us (just ask anyone with a garage).Many of those things packed away in those special storage spaces would be devastating to lose..
But have you ever thought that way about what is on your tablets, computers and mobile phones? Right now, most folks have hundreds of photos and videos on their mobile devices alone. The photo library the average personal computer probably has much more than that, not to mention other important files such as tax documents, papers, and many irreplaceable files.
March 31st is World Backup Day, which is an effort to raise awareness about not only the importance of backing up and protecting what is precious to us, but that it’s not really all that hard or time consuming to do.
Backing up is somewhat akin to doing software updates - no one really wants to take the time to do it. According to an annual State of User Data Backup survey, 30% of users have never backed up a device. Of the 70% that have performed a backup, only 10% backup daily, 9% weekly, 17% monthly and 22% yearly.
Now, stop and take a moment and think of what you’ve done on your electronics in one day: How many photos did you take on your phone? How many documents did you create or modify on your computer?
Imagine for a moment that you lose your device, or face a “blue screen of death” on your computer tomorrow. Would everything you put on your phone today, in the past week, month, or year be safely stored somewhere? Sure, there are data recovery services if you still have the hardware the data is on, but that can cost thousands of dollars. Is it worth it?
Sitting there and setting up a backup regime is not the most exciting thing that most people want to be doing with their time, but it’s better than dealing with a devastating loss of data. Many of us might even think, “Eh, that won’t happen to me, I’m careful with my stuff!”
What people don’t realize is that there are many ways data loss can occur-29% of incidents are caused by accidents- either physical or human error. 113 mobile phones are lost or stolen every minute. And you certainly can’t forget about our pesky malware friends that infect one in ten computers each month, the most dangerous of which is Ransomware.
Don’t those numbers sound convincing? Good. Let’s get to the important stuff. So, how do you back up a computer?
You can backup your files in a few ways: to an external hard drive, removable media such as USB storage sticks, DVDs, or even somewhere on the Internet- it’s that thing they keep calling a cloud- which can safeguard all of your stuff as well.
Norton offers an easy way to back up to the cloud, with Norton Online Backup (25GB). First time users can simply select what they want to back up. By default, your contacts, financial files, photos, email, Internet favorites, and office documents are selected. You can also specify additional file types and folders to add to the back up as well.
So, dear Norton readers, are you ready to take the pledge today?
“I solemnly swear to backup my important documents and precious memories on March 31st. #WorldBackupDay”