DigitalSafe from Americans Right to Privacy
Every day we store more data: more documents, videos, family photos, financial information and spreadsheets. This data can cover any range of needs, starting with simple documents like college English essays and extending to crucial financial records for tax filing purposes. Whether it’s just a compilation of memories or a cache of information that you need to live your life, data on personal computers is valuable. It is also easy to lose. Inevitable household disasters can result in the loss of months or years of data, leading us to look for other, more secure solutions. An online backup service could be that answer. This article will highlight some of the more common disasters that are poised to strike the unsuspecting household. We’ll take a look at ways to avoid them and the surprising frequency with which they occur.
1) Natural Disasters - These cataclysms vary greatly in their impact, bringing critical financial, informational and human losses in their destructive rampages. Tornadoes ravage landlocked areas, hurricanes flood coastal cities, earthquakes tear carefully constructed buildings in two and volcanoes cover towns in ash and molten rock. And each one of these titanic catastrophes laughs at your pitiful attempts to protect your data. You can get a leg up on these horrors by utilizing an online backup service with geo-redundant storage. This means that the service you select maintains multiple data centers with copies of your data in two or more locations. With this protecting your information, anything short of a world-wide destructive calamity would leave you able to recollect your personal files. And if, as the above scenario indicates, Armageddon did occur, it’s likely you wouldn’t have much use for your data anyway.
2) House Fire - Fires are increasingly common in populated areas, resulting in thousands of dollars of insurance claims. Arson, electrical complications, lightning strikes and extinguishing cigarettes in the carpet are some recurring causes of structure fires, and each one of them can destroy a computer or external hard drive. Geo-redundant storage can also help in these situations by creating a secondary location for your information. By restoring your data through these services, you can be without one more stressor in the case of this emergency.
3) Power Surges - Lightning can be surprisingly malevolent, especially where expensive electronics are concerned. Lightning storms that accompany major storm cells can fry electronics through power surges and house fires, as mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Securing your data in an offsite facility greatly reduces the risk of data loss to this electrical menace. Surge protectors also aid in this protection.
4) Loss/Theft - The only thing worse than having your personal information destroyed is knowing that it’s intact somewhere else. Worse than this would be to know that it’s in the hands of a thief. Identity theft is a growing problem the world over, leading to millions in losses and as many frustrated and broken victims. With an online storage service, you can retrieve your data quickly and easily, allowing you to put an immediate stop to unauthorized uses of your finances and regain your hold on your life.
5) Children - Given the opportunity, a child will break the most important and expensive thing in the room. Not all children are household disasters waiting to devastate a hard drive, but the possibility is nevertheless troubling. Taking extra precautions to ensure your child doesn’t misplace a pitcher of lemonade all over your laptop is wise. Backing up periodically to an external hard drive or using an online data storage service are some of the most effective ways to protect your crucial data.
6) Hard Drive Failure - The single most difficult disaster to account for in this battle against data loss is the eventual failure of a hard drive. All information storage devices will fail eventually, as is evidenced by the manufacturer’s “Mean Time Between Failures” statistic on all hard disks. Again, since we’re dealing with highly sensitive machinery, it’s not a question of if it will happen but when. The only way to protect against this inevitable occurrence is to store your data on multiple drives. A standard external hard drive will help, but as it is also prone to failure, an online backup service will accomplish this as well.
7) Computer Virus - Malicious computer viruses roam the sketchy sectors of the internet, preying on unsuspecting and trusting users. These viruses can fry a motherboard, destroy a processor and corrupt the data on a hard drive. Antivirus software can help identify and eliminate these threats, and firewalls will often stop the virus before it reaches your computer. Storing your data in an offsite facility, such as those provided by an online backup service, will greatly reduce the chance that your data will be completely destroyed, allowing you to maintain a secure grip on your sensitive information.
With the horrors of data corruption and destruction endlessly present in our world, be sure to protect yourself with an online storage service. Your memories and crucial documents will remain preserved and your mind will rest at ease
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