It is All Hallows’ Eve and I am building the website for my new Technology Consulting firm in Ely, Minnesota. Around me is the chaos one might expect on this day. Which means, expect the unexpected. A house full of kids and guests, and now we just added a stray standard poodle. Well, it is Halloween after all. 🙂

The lesson for today is backups! We all know we need to backup our valuable data, but often we don’t. What is worse than losing days, weeks, or even years worth of work? Drives fail, servers crash, users accidentally delete files. These scenarios don’t even include a cracker breaking in to your system, viruses, or malware.

Secure, off-site backups are a must for anyone using data. Why off-site? Well, let’s say you have all your data on your desktop but you are backing up to an external USB drive. What happens if your house burns down? Most likely your desktop and your USB drive just went up in smoke.

These days, with Internet speeds as high as they are, you can easily backup your data to the “cloud” or the Internet. But don’t assume your host provider is backing up your data! Not to mention that if your host provider is out there in the cloud somewhere, then you probably want to keep some local copies of your data. Never assume that your data is being backed up. Also, test your backups from time to time to make sure they really are backing up your data.

Even if your backups are working, there is still another issue. Are your backups secure? After all, this is all your hard earned data, and if it is all out there somewhere, what if someone malicious gains access to it?

Backups are a crucial component to Disaster Recovery and Computer Security.

Oh good, my wife found the owners of the standard poodle and the husband is on his way…

It is important that you backup your data safely and securely. Which is not as easy as it should be. The two important things to remember are, is your data backed up and stored someplace safe, in case a lava flow destroys your computer, and is it secure. You can protect your network and system as much as you want, but what if someone steals your backup?

I have been dealing with this for years, and I will do my best to find a backup solution that meets your needs.

–Ted

Ted Parvu

My hacking career began at age 12, when my father brought home a Sinclair ZX-81 computer kit and a lifelong fascination with computing was born. I became a privacy and security advocate after learning of the US Government's criminal investigation against Phil Zimmermann. Years later I found myself in Silicon Valley being paid to hack Phil's PGP code. I soon tired of the rat race and moved to the Northwoods of Minnesota where I have over 2 million acres of protected wilderness to roam. Here I indulge in my passions for wilderness and technology and as an advocate for computer security and privacy.