When we want to have a spare of a wonderful food that we are eating we can make one lunchbox and save it to enjoy the same flavor again. It may not be the perfect analogy, but when it comes to our data we can have a backup.
This little word has been keeping us awake at night since we began to delegate the processing and storage of our important information to the computer. These are contacts, communications, e-mails, documents, photos, music, in other words, an infinite amount of data. But it’s always possible for a “problem” to occur along the way. Our computer, cell phone, hard drive, cloud or pen drive can malfunction, be stolen, taken by authorities, or we can even fall victim to an attack and lose access to online content or even access to the files on our devices.
Recommendations for backup copies:
– Make periodic backups of your files. Evaluate how often you produce or store important files.
– Always keep a backup copy in a different location from where your original files are located, to avoid loss in case of theft, fire, or other local disaster.
– Preferably keep your backups encrypted, to prevent someone with access to your storage device from accessing all your data.
– If possible, keep backups offline (off the network), meaning without internet access, to prevent them from being corrupted or altered in the event of an online attack (e.g. ransomware).
Our backups can be stored in different locations or devices:
Offline (outside the internet) – e.g. USB drive or external hard drive.
Online (on someone’s computer connected to the network) – e.g. cloud or server.
We have several ways of backing up this data, it all depends on the volume of data, the sensitivity of this data, and the familiarity we have with tools. We can simply copy the original files to the chosen backup location, such as an external hard drive, or we can use some program that facilitates this process for us. We recommend Criptomator, which encrypts the contents of your data and stores it in your preferred cloud service such as Dropbox, Nextcloud, or Google Drive.
Regardless of the chosen method and location, the important thing is to have an updated backup, and preferably more than one, online and offline!
ATTENTION
These guidelines help us avoid the loss of information, but they do not prevent malicious individuals (criminals, authorities, etc.) from accessing the original data on your device (cell phone, computer, USB drive, email). To ensure that other people do not access your data when they have physical access to your devices, we strongly recommend that you encrypt (shuffle) all your devices and/or data.
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