Back Up Your Data
Dec 12, 2017
By: Jeff Olejnik
Healthcare
While it’s impossible to predict when your hardware will fail, it’s safe to assume that it will. What would happen if your phone and computer were caught in a fire? How much work would you lose? The best time to implement a backup strategy is before you need it.
The standard backup strategy is 3-2-1. That means three copies of all important files, on two different mediums (hard drives and DVDs, for example), and one copy off site. This can be implemented fairly easily by keeping important data in a designated folder on your computer. Once a week, make a copy of that folder and store it on a cloud data storage drive as well as a, external hard drive. The cloud storage drive will act as your offsite copy. Another great benefit of using a cloud storage drive is that the providers have their own backups and redundancy for their infrastructure.
Encrypt your backups to ensure only you have access to your confidential information. (If using an online service like Google DriveTM, Dropbox, or OneDrive®, ensure that only you have access to your confidential information.)
Backing up your data is also a great way to defend yourself from ransomware attacks, which are attacks that encrypt the files on your computer and require you to make a payment to obtain the private key to decrypt them. If you have your data backed up to an external device or cloud storage, it is easy to simply wipe your hard drive and restore your backed up data to the drive.Author(s)
