Protect your Computer's Data

Computer Storage – How we can use past experience to protect our personal information. The field of information storage has changes as the use of computer technology has developed. What would normally take masses of physical storage space, often requiring the expensive use of freehold or leasehold premises that could be put to much more productive use, can now be stored on the hard drives of computers, both personal and business computers. It is important to make sure that your information so preserved is kept safe. Although we are dealing with modern technology overcoming the need to store information and documentation physically, we should bear in mind some of the simple steps that we used to take when storing our important information.
Firstly, we would never leave sensitive personal information and particularly financial documentation lying around where anyone could pick it up and, worse, use it for their own personal gain and your detriment, would we? No, instead we would place the documents in question under lock and key, in a drawer of your desk or a secure filing cabinet. If the document were particularly valuable, in terms of the potential consequences of its loss, even more secure protective measures would be taken, such as keeping it in a safe or even depositing it with your lawyer or bank.
All this suggests that it should be second nature, therefore, that if you are going to store information on your computer, you should take steps, commensurate with the importance of that information, to ensure that it is kept secure. In other words, you should ensure that you have adequate protection against the hijacking of your data (and even your identity) through an attack on your computers system from a virus, or other forms of malware or spyware.
If yours is a business system, you should be looking at the more commercially based anti-virus guards and ensure that your staff are all well aware of the importance of protecting their individual computers against infection. This way, you should be able to keep your information free from any prying eyes in the same way that you did when dealing with physical documents.
However, there were also threats of a different nature against your papers before you started committing your information to your computer’s hard drive.
To put it simply, documents would get lost, damaged or destroyed altogether. Sometimes, such documents would be essential to the person who they belonged to. That is why the simple practice of Xeroxing important documents grew up, with the photocopy frequently being certified as a true copy of the original by a lawyer or a notary. That way, if the original were lost or destroyed there would still be a way of proving the existence (and content) of that original by reference to the copy.

Applying this straightforward piece of commonsense to computer data means, quite simply, that you should back up the data on your computer regularly in order to avoid its loss in the event that your system breaks down or your hard drive suffers irreparable damage. Backing up your data means, simply, copying it to a compact disk, digital versatile disk, USB stick or external hard drive. In this way, you will preserve your data should your computer suffer a problem.

Conclusion
Hopefully this short article shows that, even though technological developments have affected the way in which we store out information, we can still do much to protect that information by reference to the pre-computer era, where we took simple practical steps to protect our important papers.
 

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