Online Backup Guide

If you never thought about securing and backing up your digital data you should start now. Using an online backup system will help you to secure your data and increase your internet security. In a recent survey it was revealed that almost half of SMBs don’t backup their data and in excess of 90% of individual users, both casual computer users and even those working from home, never backup their data at all. There are many reasons for a regular online backup and if you are amongst the people that seldom or never backup their data you should read on!

Online backup is similar to an insurance policy

Unfortunately some people think that insurance policies are useless and a waste of time and money because they think they have to spent money on something they probably never need. Thinking that way is fine whilst you don’t need to make a claim, but as soon as you do need to claim – it will cost you more than the amount you might have spent on the insurance policy. Seeing online backups in the same way as paying for an insurance policy is wrong and can be a costly mistake in the long run.
As long as your computer is working fine and your data is there – why would you want to pay for an online backup service, or indeed any sort of backup system, even if you’re only buying a few blank DVDs to burn your data on? Well it’s as simple as this – once it’s gone, it’s gone. No matter what has caused the loss of data, be it an online security breach or a computer virus, you won’t be able to get it back without spending an awful lot of money on a data recovery service – which even then will have limited success.

No matter if you are a business which lost all his hard work or personal customer which lost all his photos of his family and the whole music collection – most of your data is lost forever and you won’t get it back!

Losing the data

A data loss can never happen to me! – Maybe you are of the people that think like that. Maybe you think you don’t have to worry about your internet security. And you are absolutely wrong. Well the biggest risk to losing your data is a hardware failure on your computer, which is responsible for 44% of all data loss. Thinking you’re immune to the risk of hardware failure data loss because you’ve got a high-end machine is a risky approach to take, even if it’s a brand new machine you really should check the terms and conditions of the manufacturers guarantee.
Despite that you also need to consider how stable your software is, as software corruption is responsible for 12% of all data loss. 30% of the reported data losses are due to human error, inadvertently deleting data or even wiping a whole drive. 7% of all losses are due to fire and other catastrophes and the last 7% are due to weak internet security. Viruses and Trojans are responsible for the data loss.

Online backup – a time saving investment

Already using a local backup for your data is no good reason for not using an online backup system. Firstly there’s the fact that once it’s been set up you can in effect forget about your online backups, until such time as you might need to retrieve any data. The reason for this is that the backup will be automatically carried out – there is no need to remember to change disks, tapes or hard disk drives. Also, you won’t have the inconvenience of storing and sorting through backup tapes and disks or worry about having at least a master backup stored off-site – as all your online backups will automatically be stored off-site! An online backup service will also be another useful tool in your overall internet security system – especially in the case you’re the victim of an online attack.
Another very good reason for an online backup system is that you don’t have to install a new local system on your own every time you get a new computer. So you can save a lot of time and stress. A few mouse clicks is all it takes to save and protect or restore all your data after setting up a whole new PC system or operation system.