Those ones and zeroes on your hard drive are your whole world. If your computer was stolen or destroyed without a backup, your life might be set back 3 years or more. The data on those platters isn’t just of practical importance, but it also contains a lot of highly sensitive private details and memories which have sentimental value.
For these reasons, you simply can’t put a price on your information.
But why would anyone else want to harm or steal your data? This information is so private and personal that – although it’s incredibly valuable to you – it should be of little or no value to others.
But if that’s the case, why do we have to protect ourselves from hackers, viruses, and other threats? Why is backing up even necessary?
Well, nearly all of the threats that could potentially motivate someone or something to destroy your private information can be categorized into one of 3 groups.
First Motive: Malice
Sometimes, people just want to hurt you and there’s nothing that you can do about it. This motivation can come out of a desire for revenge, wanting to make a political statement, hoping to gain some sort of financial reward, or simply wanting the rush of power that comes from being bad.
Second Motive: Accidents
Sometimes, good people can unintentionally do very destructive things. You might bring your laptop into the repair shop to upgrade the RAM, only to have it returned with a formatted hard drive because one of the employees misunderstood one of the instructions.
Other types of human error that could affect your data include:
· Picking a weak password
· Dropping the computer or hard drive on the ground or into water
· Forgetting your computer on the subway
· Mistakenly overwriting an important data file or document
Third Motive: Pure Chance
There are some events that you simply can’t prevent from occurring, no matter how careful you are.
These would include things such as fires, floods, blackouts, tornadoes, etc... When these events take place, your own safety has to come first. All you can do is just step aside and let things take their course.
Also, this would include freak events that are so random they couldn’t have been anticipated. A gorilla could run into your office with a bucket of water and throw it on your computer. You can’t possibly plan for that.
These are the 3 main reasons that somebody, or something, might want to wipe out your digital existence. In order to be ready, you need to implement a 2-prong defensive strategy which includes both prevention and recovery.
This means that you must plan for every possible data loss situation, and create a plan for preventing the worst from happening. And this plan also needs to be augmented with a comprehensive backup system with a well-rehearsed data recovery process.
About The Author: Storagepipe has a number of online backup services that will protect you against every motive which threatens your data. http://storagepipe.com
