External drive or cloud backup?
Q: What do you recommend as the top cloud backup services for personal use on desktop PC?
A: The two cloud backup services that seem to come up in discussion most often for me are Acronis True Image and Carbonite. They’ve been around awhile and they both enjoy very good reputations.
Neither of these solutions are terribly cheap, especially if you need to back up a lot of data. But if you need a simple, basic backup solution they are much more reasonable.
I don’t choose to use an online backup service, however. I prefer to spend the money on an external hard drive I keep on my desk to manage the backups of my data. It’s a onetime expense rather than a monthly service fee and my data is instantly accessible when I need it.
That said, there are benefits to cloud backup solutions that you don’t get with a local backup, such as preserving your data in the event of a natural disaster or having access to your files from any internet connected device.
I would recommend reading some reviews of the various cloud solutions such as the one by PC Mag located at tinyurl.com/helplinecloudbackup just so you know what your options are.
Q: What is two-factor authentication and why would I need it?
A: Two-factor authentication is a means of protecting your online accounts that forces you to take an extra step to prove that you are who you say you are when logging into online services.
Basically, what happens is that you log into a website with your username and password and the site then requires a second form of authentication, which could be a one-time code sent to your phone or a code generated by an application that is linked to your account.
With our passwords constantly at risk of being discovered by nefarious actors, this added security makes it much more difficult for hackers to gain access to our online data.