Adventures in Dataford: Alice learns about data backups

Welcome to Dataford

Cityscape representing Dataford. A fictitious city where citizens learn cyber security lesssons.

A remarkable tapestry of technological interaction unfolds every day in Dataford. Known for its data centers for backups, innovative mindset, and strong community ties, a diverse range of tech users come together to create a dynamic technological environment. From experienced power users to beginners, each citizen plays a unique role in shaping the city’s tech landscape.

Meet Alice

Alice is an avid photographer and artist with an impressive collection of digital creations. Her passion was capturing the world’s beauty through her camera lens and then transforming those moments into exquisite digital art pieces on her computer. However, Alice had a crucial flaw in her digital habits: she rarely backed up her files.

For years, Alice had accumulated a vast archive of irreplaceable photographs and artwork on her aging computer. She always intended to create backups, but life’s busyness and the demands of her art often took precedence.

Photographer standing in front of her computer.

The incident

One evening, as Alice was immersed in editing a set of particularly breathtaking sunset photographs, disaster struck. A sudden power surge caused her computer to shut down abruptly. When she tried to restart it, she was met with a heart-wrenching sight—a black screen and an error message indicating that the hard drive had been corrupted.

Panicked and in disbelief, Alice contacted a professional computer technician who assessed the situation. Unfortunately, the damage was extensive, and the chances of recovering her files were slim to none. The technician explained that the data on the hard drive was likely lost forever.

Tears welled up in Alice’s eyes as she realized the magnitude of her loss. All those years of capturing moments and creating beautiful digital art had vanished in an instant due to her failure to back up her files. She felt an overwhelming sense of grief and regret, as her creations were now lost to her.

The resolution

Daily automated backups

Determined not to let this devastating experience define her, Alice started anew. She purchased a reliable external hard drive, subscribed to a cloud backup solution and created automatic backups on her system to ensure that her precious digital creations were never at risk again. She dedicated countless hours to rebuilding her portfolio from scratch, recreating her favorite art pieces and capturing new moments of beauty.

The incident had a profound impact on Alice’s approach to her digital work. She became a passionate advocate for data backup, sharing her story with friends and fellow artists to emphasize the importance of preserving their digital creations. She encouraged them to set up regular backups and take advantage of cloud storage services to ensure that their hard work would never be lost.

Photographer sitting next to a computer that has been backed up to the cloud for disaster recovery in case of a failed hard drive.

The lesson

Don't over look your data backups.

In the end, Alice turned a painful loss into a valuable lesson. She not only safeguarded her new digital creations but also found the motivation to push her artistic boundaries even further. While she couldn’t recover her old files, she used the experience as a catalyst for growth and became a staunch advocate for data protection.

Data backups are important for individuals and companies.

Don’t repeat Alice’s mistakes. While data loss is difficult for individuals, it’s is incredibly painful for businesses.  Additionally, if the size of the data loss is large, there are financial and reputational damages that come.  Creating and testing data backups regularly is crucial for organizations.  It safeguards against unexpected data loss, ensuring that your precious information is always protected and accessible. When setting up backups, it’s important to use the 3-2-1 backup system. This means have 3 copies of your data, on at least 2 different medias or storage devices and have one off site.   This provides diverse and secure options for preserving your data, and allows you to recover from any unforeseen incidents swiftly. Last, but certainly not least, a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is necessary to test out at least annuallyThis tested plan helps minimizes downtime during a difficult time. By taking these thoughtful measures, you’re investing in a safety net that offers peace of mind and reliability for the future.

Ready to boost your team’s security knowledge?

By educating employees on the importance of data backups for both business and personal data, you help protect company data and potentially employee personal information.  At IT Enabled, we acknowledge that many don’t even know how to setup company backups.  We also realize that educating your team on cybersecurity best practices can be a challenge. That’s why we offer disaster recovery programs as well as comprehensive cybersecurity training and assessments for your employees. You don’t have to navigate this journey alone. Contact us today to learn how we can help you build confidence and resilience against cyber threats.