A SIMPLE WAY TO PROTECT YOUR COMPUTER DATA
Most people who own computing devices have experienced a data loss of some scale. This can be cause by a variety of factors including accidental deletion, corruption of files, virus attacks or even loss of the devices.
The effects are varied, ranging from the uneasiness of losing sentimental data in form of photos videos and other mementos for individual, to affecting actual work performance and overall productivity of organizations.
I have suffered two devastating computer data losses in my life.
The first one was a few years ago when the hard drive of my then few months old computer crushed, sending me into days of depression because I had consolidated all my data on that computer on the strength of its large storage capacity.
The second loss was even more crushing. It was thanks to an unfortunate matatu robbery incident where I lost a laptop together with my back-up external hard drive.
Interspersed between these two huge losses was small scale ones, and this made me think more seriously of ways of securing my data.
According to Laura Tich, Who runs the digital security programme at Code for Africa, there is no foolproof method of securing our computing data against loss so long as there is the human link. She, however, recommends user awareness as a vital aspect of ensuring data safety.
‘Data loss can cause adverse effects on individuals and companies,’ she says. She lists financial losses, damage of reputation and identity theft as those effects.
The human link is the most essential factor in data security, she says. She explains that this is because human beings are bound to make mistakes and also because they are the ones who are likely to steal your data or devises. She, therefore, recommends that we save more than one copy of our essential data.
And this brings us squarely to what we can do to safeguard our data, and it is as easy as 3–2–1.
The 3–2–1 convention is to always keep at least 3 copies of your valued data, on at least 2 different types of media, with at least one copy being off-site and isolated from the other copies.
The main reason the loss when my hard drive crush was devastating was because I only had one copy. The 3–2–1 convention holds that in addition to your primary data, you should keep at least two more backups.
Keeping three copies might sound excessive but we need to remember that all forms of computer storage can fail. No means of storing computer data -hard drives, solid state disks, flash drives and optical media such as CD — is absolutely infallible.
Storing your important data on multiple media therefore makes it last longer because some of them will survive in the long run.
Generally if you only keep one copy then it means that you do not mind if you came back and found it is not there anymore. Saving once is as risky as not saving at all.
The second part of the 3–2–1 convention holds that we should save our files on two types of media. This mitigates the risk of absolute data loss because two different devices have no common failure causes therefore the probability of failure of both is almost impossible.
Different types of computer media have different primary failure causes. For example hard drives are susceptible to mechanical problems while optical media such as CDs and DVDs tend to fail over time yet they are more resistant to physical damage due to shocks and water to a certain extent.
So when you consider the possibilities of losing your data to all the causes of data loss, you should store your data on two different storage types such as internal hard drive and removable media like external hard drives and DVDs.
And lastly, but very vital, there should be a physical separation of at least one copy of the backup. The one lesson I learned during the matatu robbery incident was that it is reckless to keep your backup right next to your primary data, because you risk losing both copies in case of theft or other disasters such as fire.
Physical separation might also include keeping your backup online using services such as Google Drive and Dropbox.
However it is not advisable to keep highly sensitive data online.
