» Data Loss Prevention and Protection «

Any you really doing enough to protect your valuable data? Thought not!

This is scattered across the site and notes piled up in dusty corners, but it is crucially important, so I'll gather it together.

Briefly, very briefly, who needs to protect what, and why:

Home users

Game saves
Photos
Personal accounts
Personal, school and work documents
[ Wills, insurance policies and related ]

Business users

Accounts
Employee records
Client lists
Data files and documents
Custom software applications and macros
Intranets
etc, etc

Home and Business users

Emails
Browser Bookmarks / favourites
Contact lists from email, PIMs etc
Software licences and serial numbers
Records of hardware, upgrades, software versions etc.

Who, what, where, when, why, how to backup data?

• Who needs to do this?
  Anyone and everyone
  
  
• Who's after your data?
  Competitors and Drug addled burglars into identity theft are just two.
  
  
• What - to save?
  Everything, because Sods law states you'll forget the one that gets you in the end
  
  
• What - are the risks?
  Fire, theft, 'Acts of God' and the usual insurance scams
  Data loss to malicious viruses, hackers etc
  Data loss to disgruntled employees
  Data loss to hardware failure
  Data loss due to computer crashes
  
  
• Where to save to?
  Depends on what you are saving, but I'm inclined towards valuable documents in a bank deposit box, data there too, a copy in a secure place in work, and a third in a secure place off-site
  
  
• When to back-up?
  As often as necessary. Just how much will the loss affect you?
  
  
• Why?
  'Cos!
  Don't get me started… it really winds me up when people don't take my advice, because they are the ones that wail the loudest when the muck hits the fan.
  First off, you WILL loose data. The more you use computers, the greater the risk, it's just a matter of time and scale. Here's a real risk I'm looking at currently:
  
  Small business with several computers. The 'server' is one of the oldest machines - and is used as a stand-alone machine for Internet, occasional printing, typing - and it has a history of crashing.
  They do back up to an external data - but We don't do it often because it takes too long..
  
  Sound familiar?
  
  I've explained until I'm blue in the face that they need to throw some money at it before it's too late - and ranted a bit more when they asked me to recover… It's a bankruptcy bomb waiting to go off, but, as is often here wailed by those pulling the accounts strings, We can't afford to upgrade.
  
  The loss of a days work is probably more that the cost of the needed changes. Given how poorly they back up, WHEN that antique dies and takes the files with it, well…
  
  Sound familiar?