Preventing computer security attacks has been a key focus in previous articles. This one deals more with recovering from them. Often, after a hacking incident occurs the response is somewhat limited to damage control. If someone were to hack into your computer and read some personal files, for example, confidentiality has been breached. Unless you're well versed in "memory spells," and I suspect you're not, you can't recover from information being disclosed. (Well not legally at least.) Once it's out there, it's out there. But say information wasn't disclosed. It was just altered, damaged, or destroyed. Enter one of the most important rules in the history of the personal computer: Backup, backup, backup. And when you're done, backup some more.
Truth told one could never have too many backups, especially for mission critical data when contingency is the highest priority. Even if it's not intentional and not due to hackers, data can still get lost. Remember data is stored by machines, and just like humans they're not perfect! Seriously, data gets damaged more often then most people would like to believe. This could be caused by hardware problems (like bad sectors in disk drives), software problems (like overwriting existing files without prompting "okay?" first), or human error (like "woops! Oh no!"). If you're ever working on a really important document, like an article for publication on Suite101.com, it's a good --no make that a great-- idea to back-up that file on a floppy disk just in case some catastrophe befalls your hard drive.
Backing-up data is also a good defense against malicious viruses. While using anti-virus software and keeping it updated is the best way to keep viruses off your system backing up your data is still an advisable precaution. Occasionally a virus will break out so fast that it will become widespread long before anti-virus software is updated. And if that virus should decide to delete all your MS-Word files wouldn't you be glad you kept that back-up floppy disk handy? Floppy disks are not the only place to back data up. They only hold a very limited amount of room to store files. There are other devices that can store lots more data. Zip Drives, JAZ Drives, or even CD-burners are very useful for backing up larger amounts of data. You can also use tape drives, which are made specifically for backing up information.
Data loss happens to the best of us. But the best of us are prepared for it. Last week I got a bit of a scare after I logged in to my Suite101.com "SuiteMail" account and much to my astonishment found it empty! Not only was there no mail in my inbox (as astonishing as that may sound) but all my folders were gone too. It was as if someone had wiped out my entire account. After contacting tech support I found out that the e-mail service provider that Suite101.com uses had experienced cluster problems. Hey, it happens. But since they were so well prepared, and had routinely backed everything up, all they had to do was restore the data from those backups. Sure enough, as promised things got back to normal. So once again proper preparation allowed Suite101.com's e-mail provider to avert making a bad situation worse. Instead, they made a bad situation --well, better.
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