Over the last few weeks I wrote about destroying or encrypting your sensitive data to defend against identity theft. Which is great for protecting yourself while that data is in use, but there’s not data security in the world that will do you any good if you don’t have a backup of your important documents.

I got out of my car the other day, and picked up the two bags that were sitting on the passenger seat. One contained my external hard drive and assorted paraphenalia, the other contained my lunch. I fumbled the bags as I stood up, but I was able to save my apple from certain bruising. My hard drive however was not so lucky. I dropped it flat on the concrete of the parking lot and I knew right away that I was going to lose my data. But I was okay with that, thanks to an application called Synkron.

Synkron is a data backup application that works great for home users (like myself). It works across operating systems, and allows you to pick and choose which files are most important to backup and on what schedule. Even though the innerds of my external hard drive had been smashed to pieces, I had backed up everything on my home computer and avoided losing everything from my taxes to my family photos.

While backups for home users are important, business users should create backups of their important files much more often. But who has the time to fiddle with backup applications like Syncron. Thankfully Eligeo is a partner with Genie-soft , a data backup provider that has some of the most full featured software I’ve ever encountered.

Genie-soft even offers applications that will backup your data offsite at secure data facilities so that your mission critical data is available at all times even in the event of a natural disaster, act of god, or theft.

So to wrap up my series of posts on data protection I’ll abbreviate:

• Always have a backup of your important data.
• Always encrypt your entire hard drive.
• Always destroy the hard drive before disposing of old computers.

Next week I’d like to talk about the importance of a modern web site, and how that site can help improve your business.