Take care of the security of your files!

Unfortunately, sometimes we may encounter an unpleasant surprise when our equipment suddenly disappears or simply stops working, and we lose all our files. Of course, this applies not only to business data but also to vacation photos or videos with our beloved pet.

That’s why it’s so important to properly take care of the security of our digital information, ensuring that it is always accessible when we need it. Backup copies can also save us when we accidentally delete the wrong file or, after hours of hard work on a report, realize that the version from before the weekend made more sense.

It’s enough to think through a simple data security strategy and then take a few simple actions to protect ourselves from the negative consequences of sudden file loss.

Cloud as a Good Start

The simplest solution to protect against data loss is to take advantage of the ubiquitous cloud.

Currently, most available solutions on the market offer some way of syncing data with external servers. Additionally, you can use well-known cloud drives for storing files like Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, or Dropbox. This solution not only takes the responsibility of securing our files off us but also allows easy synchronization across all our devices.

However, it’s important to remember that this is not an ideal solution. First of all, not all data can be stored this way. Secondly, there is still a possibility that, due to an unfortunate combination of circumstances, we may lose our files stored in the cloud. Of course, the bigger the provider, the lower the risk, but we must not forget about it.

Furthermore, keep in mind that when using cloud solutions, we generally don’t have control over how and where our data is physically stored. That’s why it’s worth exploring methods to secure it ourselves, and that's exactly what backup copies are for.

What Is a Backup?

A backup is essentially any duplication of information stored on a different medium than the original one. In simple terms, copying an important presentation from your computer to a USB drive is also a backup, but it’s better to approach this in a more thoughtful and organized way.

Start by considering what information you store on which devices and which ones are most important to you, as well as which are particularly sensitive due to their confidentiality. After a preliminary assessment of your digital information repository, you can start planning a data security strategy.

Once we’ve determined what we want to secure, we need to equip ourselves with the media to allow us to do so. External hard drives are ideal for this, and they can easily be purchased at any electronics store at a reasonable price. As much as possible, we should opt for SSD drives, which provide significantly faster performance than standard HDD drives, at the cost of storage capacity. Most importantly, before purchasing, ensure that the medium is compatible with our device.

If we store large amounts of data, such as video materials or photos, it’s worth considering disk arrays that simultaneously offer a lot of storage space and automatic duplication mechanisms. RAID arrays, which I am referring to here, are medium-sized devices that feature

Another good solution could be network drives, with manufacturers often including special software that allows the automation of the backup process for our devices. Network drives are nothing more than external hard drives or RAID arrays connected to our home or office network, so we don’t need to connect them each time to the device from which we want to copy data.

Once we have all the necessary tools to create backup copies, we can get to work. The first step is to copy the most important files from the device to the external medium so that there is more than one copy of them. For particularly sensitive files, it’s worth considering encrypting the medium used for the backup.

Next, we can think about which files already stored in the cloud we would like to have physically on our own media and deal with them. When copying data to external media, it’s worth developing a clear folder structure that will allow us to easily find what we’re looking for in the future.

We should apply this procedure to all our important files across all devices. If we want to take it a step further, we can explore solutions that allow a full backup of all the data collected on a given device, so we can easily restore it in case of loss or damage. Depending on the manufacturer and software used, the backup process will look different.

All Apple devices, however, have these solutions built-in right out of the box. This ensures that our data can always be safe regardless of our technical knowledge level. An additional advantage is the time saved, which otherwise we would have to spend managing our data.

iOS Backups

For Apple mobile devices, there are at least two ways to comprehensively secure your data.

Firstly, you should enable iCloud backup, which should be activated by default during the configuration of a new device. You can read more about this mechanism in the Apple support article.

This solution allows automatic syncing of your iPhone and iPad data to Apple's cloud, where they are stored in an encrypted manner. In the event of damage or when purchasing a new device, we can transfer our data automatically to the new equipment. This way, not only will we not lose our photos and files, but we’ll also keep installed apps, the data stored by them, and all system settings.

In addition, there is the possibility to manually perform a backup of the device on a Mac or PC.

MacOS Backups

Mac computers have a brilliant system mechanism called Time Machine that allows automatic backups. The system periodically takes snapshots of our computer data and saves them to selected external media.

This solution not only allows us to restore the content of a device in case of damage or loss but also to "retrieve" any file stored at any point in the past to the present. Although this might sound complicated, in practice, it allows us to restore an old version of a selected file or even part of it with just a few clicks, without affecting the entirety of our data.

You can read more about how to configure Time Machine on your Mac in the Apple support article.

One Backup Is Not Enough

Finally, I would like to mention that when it comes to backup copies, you should follow an important rule:

“Two is one and one is none”

This simple maxim holds great wisdom because technology has its quirks, and even the best security strategy won’t work if any of its links fail. Therefore, try to create backups as many times as possible, especially for the most critical files. Use all available solutions, from cloud services to backups on external drives and duplicating data across different devices.