Hide Your Data in Your Mattress

Do you hide your money in your mattress or bury it in mason jars in your backyard? If that is your idea of keepking your money safe, then you must have been in a coma for a couple of hundred years, or you may be a drug dealer. If you make an honest living and pay your bills, then you probably keep your money in the bank, right?? Well, I do know a few people who take their paycheck straight to the check cashing place across the street from Walmart as soon as they get off work, but that's not what this is about. A lot of otherwise smart people are stashing their backup data in a desk drawer or somewhere in the house or office as if that is the smart thing to do. I bet you are saying; "not me, I have a safe..." Okay, I also bet you keep your money in the bank, not in your house or in that safe.

When your money is in the bank, you don't have to worry about it being lost to fire, theft, or other disaster that might make affect your home or business. You might be thinking; who would want to steal my data? and if they did, I would still have a copy... Maybe, what if there was a disaster in your community and looters raided your home or business, and took your computers, your furniture and everything else that was or wasn't tied down. It happens, as I am sure some people in New Orleans can attest to. Your money that was in the bank, is still in the bank and you can still get it. So treat your data with the same respect.

Using an online backup service to backup your data and keep it offsite in a secure data storage facility is roughly equivalent to keeping your money in the bank. Keeping your data in your house or office is about as smart as keeping your money in your mattress. It may have been a good idea at the time, but the times have changed. You might be thinking that using an online backup service is expensive. A typical bank will probably take more of your money in fees and interest than an online backup service will cost you. Online backup services are becoming very mature and robust, most store your data in encrypted form and replicate the data to remote data centers. The technology is solid and most of us have plenty of bandwidth in our Internet connections to backup our most valuable data.

You may not buy into this online backup thing now, but you should, there is no reason not to. In a few years it will be as ubiquitous as cable TV and cell phones, and the thought of backing up your data to a tape and keeping it in your closet will seem like something from the civil war days.