Today I got to deliver the bad news to another client. Brand new laptop with an unbootable drive, and I have been trying unsuccessfully all weekend to recover useful data from the failed hard drive. No luck. I called the client, who burst into tears when I asked if she had a backup of her files. No she did not have a backup.
Personally, I hate these calls. Considering how much of our work, life, and money is tied to these imperfect little machines, you would think people would do more to protect their data. “Oh, I can do it myself – I’ll back it up to a flash drive!!” No, actually you won’t, you’ll just think about it, or if you try it, you will find that 69 GB of files, pictures, music and movies will NOT fit on a 4 GB flash drive.
There are a couple of great online services that will back up unlimited amounts of your stuff or under $60 per year. Think of it as DATA INSURANCE. If you own a home, you are REQUIRED to carry insurance on that asset. Same for your AUTOMOBILE. These are much easier to replace than your pictures of that once-in-a-lifetime trip to France, or the trove of baby pictures and videos of your children.
You can call us for our recommendations, or to sign up with our online backup service, or to get help setting up the backup service of your choice. Please do it today. The tears you save will be your own.
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About the Author:
I am a cybersecurity and IT instructor, cybersecurity analyst, pen-tester, trainer, and speaker. I am an owner of the WyzCo Group Inc. In addition to consulting on security products and services, I also conduct security audits, compliance audits, vulnerability assessments and penetration tests. I also teach Cybersecurity Awareness Training classes. I work as an information technology and cybersecurity instructor for several training and certification organizations. I have worked in corporate, military, government, and workforce development training environments I am a frequent speaker at professional conferences such as the Minnesota Bloggers Conference, Secure360 Security Conference in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, the (ISC)2 World Congress 2016, and the ISSA International Conference 2017, and many local community organizations, including Chambers of Commerce, SCORE, and several school districts. I have been blogging on cybersecurity since 2006 at http://wyzguyscybersecurity.com