Share

From this page you can share Oh no! My laptop was stolen and I lost all my critical data! to a social bookmarking site or email a link to the page.
Social WebE-mail
Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Oh no! My laptop was stolen and I lost all my critical data!
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from Kabissa
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the Kabissa web site.

Oh no! My laptop was stolen and I lost all my critical data!

Frustration.gifOh my, so sorry. Pole sana. Unless you keep backup copies of your critical documents and other computer files, there is unfortunately little you can do to get it all back unless you recover the laptop. And no, hitting your head on your table won't help either. What you can do is learn from this experience. And tell your friends so they learn it too! Mimi cannot stress enough: disaster will strike and you cannot afford to be unprepared.

Read on to learn about a few simple things you can do to keep your important computer files safe, at little or no cost to your organization.

Disasters big and small will strike!

OK, this sounds alarmist. But remember, a lost or stolen laptop is only one of a range of things that can go wrong - and, if you are careful, is probably the least likely to actually happen. Dust and heat frequently cause computers to malfunction. If this happens to you, at best your data will be inaccessible to you until the computer is repaired. At worst, if the computer's hard drive is actually damaged, your data might be lost forever.

Alas, data is usually lost due to simple, forgivable mistakes made by us mere human beings. Disastrous mistakes that happen all the time include opening file attachments containing computer viruses that damage data, installing "spyware" software downloaded from the Internet, or upgrading our computers without backing up the critical data first. Mimi is often guilty of simply overzealously cleaning up her desktop and removing documents that she only realizes later that she actually urgently needs.

If you frequently use computers at cybercafes, it's likely that you are using a different computer every day. Depending on how vigilent the cybercafe operators are, these computers could have all sorts of viruses or spyware software on them installed by other people. This makes your computer files vulnerable no matter how careful you are.

Decide what you cannot afford to lose ...

Given these risks, Mimi suggests creating a backup strategy. Sit down with everyone in your organization that uses computers and brainstorm all the types of computer data that your organization cannot afford to lose. Every organization is unique, so the list you will come up with will also be unique. However, here are some things you might not realize you need to backup:
  • E-mail addressbooks
  • E-mail messages
  • Web site files and databases
  • Photos and other multimedia
  • Web browser bookmarks/favorites
  • Passwords, bank details, memberships
  • Newsletters, reports, press releases
  • Templates and letterhead
  • ... and of course your proposals, correspondence, presentations, financial data, etc.

... Then figure out how to keep safe copies!

Alright - now that you know what you can't live without, it's time to think of some simple backup activities you can all incorporate into your daily routine. You will want to weigh the cost and effort involved against the actual risk of disaster - and keep in mind that for most of us there is a high risk that we will lose a few documents due to human error or a virus and a low risk that we will lose everything due to a lost computer or other major disaster.

Again, every organization is unique and you will need to create your own strategy that you feel comfortable with. Here are some ideas that might work for your organization:
  • Send copies via e-mail
    These days, so much of our critical work happens by e-mail. In fact, you probably have already sent your most critical documents to someone by e-mail. The plus side of this is that this means you have probably saved a copy in your "sent mail" folder where you can retrieve it later. If not, you you can request them to send it back to you.
  • Set up a dedicated backup webmail account
    To avoid the potential embarassment of asking someone to send back a document you lost, and to keep backups of computer files that you don't need to send to anyone else, consider creating a webmail account specifically for backup purposes. Gmail and Yahoo provide extremely generous disk quotas, and Gmail is particularly well suited to archiving large volumes of data and making them easy to find using keyword searches.
  • Upload copies to your web server
    Web servers such as Kabissa typically have robust backup schemes in place to keep your data safe going back at least a month. If you maintain a website, you already know you can upload your web pages via a FTP (file transfer protocol) program or a control panel. You may not know that you can also upload any computer files to a private folder inaccessible to anyone but you. Stay away from your public folders (httpdocs and httpsdocs on Kabissa) and be sure not to go over your disk space limits!
  • Download your Web site, mailboxes and addressbooks
    This idea may seem to contradict the previous suggestion, but is equally important. While Kabissa and other hosting providers keep backups in case of a catastrophic system failure (e.g. a broken hard drive) they will usually not be able to help you in case you accidentally overwrite or delete your Web pages or wipe out years of correspondence in your mailbox folders. The Kabissa control panel provides a tool for saving backups to your private folder for download to your computer.
  • Keep physical copies in a safe place
    Online backups are well and good. At the end of the day, however, the safest place for your computer files is with you! A good strategy is to keep physical copies in three places: at your office, offsite in case something happens to your office, and on your person in case something happens while you're travelling. How you make and keep the copies depends on the size and structure of your organization, your technical prowess, the types of data you are worried about, and of course your budget. At Kabissa, we keep all our essential documents on a single file server in our office, which is copied on a monthly basis to a CD-R disk and taken home by a different staff person.

Pitfalls to avoid

  • If your organization is security conscious, consider encrypting your backup copies with a password, and use encrypted, secure connections (e.g. SFTP) when uploading and downloading files to and from online backups. Don't send files via e-mail that you are not willing to stick on the back of a postcard and send through the postal service.
  • Not everyone needs to have access to all physical backup copies! For example, ensure the accountant has a good backup strategy and is able to recover from a disastrous loss of data, and make sure you as a manager know where all the backup copies of payroll and banking details are being kept. Other employees don't need to have access to that data.
  • Check that you are actually able to recover your data. Especially if you are encrypting your backups as you copy them to CD-R disks, be sure to test them to make sure you are able to actually get at the critical data you are saving in the event of a disaster.
  • Avoid information overload. There is no need to create copies of every single thing produced by your organization - just keep copies of files that you really need and are not being kept safe elsewhere. For example, Kabissa keeps regular backups of our key documents on our file server, but we only back up our website files and databases from time to time, usually before making a big change.

Resources and further reading