RAINY DAY PROTECTION

EVERYONE KNOWS A BUSINESS MUST BACK UP IMPORTANT DATA, BUT WHAT'S THE BEST STRATEGY FOR COMPANIES THAT DON'T HAVE TECHNICAL EXPERTS ON HAND? BILL BENNETT ANALYSES TODAY'S CLOUD BACK UP OPTIONS.

I n theory backing up data should be easy. After all, it’s only a matter of copying files from one place to another to make a duplicate for an emergency.

While that sounds simple, managing back ups has been a struggle for computer professionals since the earliest days of information technology. For a start, important data is rarely stored in one single, easy-to-find location. It is often scattered across a network and on several devices. The data may not even be on your premises.

Many applications store data in special silos making it harder to find. There’s a tendency to store a lot of junk data among the good stuff. Sorting the wheat from the chaff can be so hard that it’s easier to just keep it all.

To cap all that, the amount of data we use continues to grow at a rapid rate.

You can find all kinds of scary statistics about how much data companies generate. Here’s one to share around the BBQ:

More data has been created since 2015 than since the dawn of human civilisation. Sometime in the next two years the total data in the world will reach 40 zettabytes. A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.

A decade ago, the best back up strategy for a typical small

business was to dump everything on external hard drives or a network server. For extra security they would save a copy of this data every week or so to a portable drive then store it somewhere else. That way if your office burnt down there’s a copy of all your data in a box in your garage.

In the past ten years The Cloud has been the best place to store offsite copies of data. More recently, as office servers have been replaced by cloud servers, a lot of everyday data is also in the cloud. Savvy users tend to have two copies of this in separate clouds as an extra security measure.

AUTOMATED BACK- UP

When data is vast and complex, the only sane way to deal with it is to automate the process – that’s something computers are good at.

Both Microsoft Windows and Apple’s MacOS have built-in backup tools. If you’re not already familiar with the ones on your own computers, now would be a good time to take a look at them.

The Microsoft Windows back-up software can be a little daunting for non-geeks. It has another problem – you can’t always be sure it is doing its job in the background as you work.

If you do use it, then regularly check your data is being stored where and when you think it is. The last time we checked our Windows system it had stopped backing up, but there was no warning message.

Microsoft customers can use the company’s OneDrive cloud storage for backing-up, and if you buy an Office 365 subscription there’s no extra cost.

Apple’s Time Machine is simpler to use; it makes snapshots of the current state of your Mac. When you want to restore a file you can scroll back through history to find the missing data. The bigger your back up drive, the longer the file record. Both approaches are a good first step. But they are designed for individual users and a single device. Many business owners need something more robust and sophisticated.

BUSINESS- CLASS BACK UP

There are many back up options to choose from.

For a small to medium business with modest computer use, Acronis True Image 2018 is one of the best options. Like all its rivals, Acronis promises to store all your data so it can be recovered fast. The company's marketing says the process is complete and easy.

Acronis also says it has high levels of security. You are given a choice of storing data locally, in the cloud, or both. Opting for both is best.

Acronis differs from its rivals by adding a layer of defence to protect you from ransomware. This is a nasty form of online attack where criminals get access to your data. They then encrypt your files so you can no longer read them. You’ll get a message from the criminals telling to pay an amount of money — usually they want Bitcoin. Typically, this will cost you from around $200 to $1000. When you pay up they provide you with a key to unlock the data.

Or not. Some ransomware crooks don’t hand over the keys after locking your data. Others may hand over a key, but leave some malware behind so they can lock your data again later.

Either way, they will have your systems marked as vulnerable and a possible target for a future attack.

Ransomware is hard to fight. One of the best defences against an attack is to make regular back ups. Crooks are onto this, so the smarter ones will access your back ups and lock these at the same time as attacking your computers.

Acronis deals with ransomware by using the same blockchain technology as Bitcoin to check that no-one is tampering with your back-ups. So, at worse, you may have to wipe your computers and restore from the Acronis back-up after an attack.

“Acronis deals with ransomware by using the same blockchain technology as Bitcoin to check that no-one is tampering with your back ups.”

Unlike some back up systems, Acronis copies everything on your computer so you can restore it completely when needed. This takes a lot of time at first. Depending on your Internet connection it may take a day or two to make an initial copy. You might need to buy an unlimited broadband plan if you have a lot of data.

Once this is done it then makes incremental back ups. That is, it only backs up data that changes from one day to the next. These back ups take no time. You can set it to make hourly, daily or less frequent back-ups.

Acronis True Image 2018 is easy to use. The software dashboard is clear and uncluttered, you feel in control of back ups and know exactly what is going on at each stage. The software costs a US$50 one-off payment for one computer, US$80 for three and US$100 for five devices.

The advance package is the same price, but is for a one year subscription that includes 250GB of cloud storage.

There’s also a premium plan that costs $100 a year for a single computer and $160 for five. It includes 1TB of cloud storage and blockchain file certification.