We evolve with newer technology that suits our lifestyle and needs. For some of us, we eventually change devices almost every year just to keep up with the latest bit of tech or to augment our every increasing digital lifestyle. But as we progress with new devices, we continue to accumulate excessive amounts of data, even in ever increasing file sizes; be it videos, pictures or memento parts of our life in digital bits and bytes.

Life in Bits and Bytes

Usage statistics easily show that an average person consumes or stores up to 0.5 Gigabytes of data either on our cloud storage or on our mobile device storage per day. Picture mementos capture and reflect our times at certain places, doing certain things, or even being with someone or some people. Like a never ending journal, we keep and share photos taken with our devices on social media platforms and store special ones in our personal vaults; either on the cloud or on our devices. But with ever increasing file sizes and snowballing media contents, how much space is really enough?

Imagine how much we would have accumulated over a year, or even a decade now? Migrating from one device to a newer device may be easy, but imagine figuring out what to do with all our life’s data and constantly moving those from one device to another. Some of those pictures or videos we may not have seen in ages already, yet we carry them around from one device to another. It’s easy to delete and dump all the dead weight contents that we don’t wish to see or remember anymore. But how to tell which is what?

Paid cloud storage solutions may become more expensive over time and yet they do not guarantee the security and safety of your data within. If your device itself is compromised by a malware, either through a phishing scam or an illegitimate app, your entire data within your device and on your cloud may just vanish or get stolen. It would definitely feel like a whole part of your life just disappearing in a split of a second. Or worse, being held ransom by a digital virus.

Also, keeping our identity safe online is critical as it is in the physical. With almost our entire life history stored in bits and bytes over the internet, it is important to be prudent in how our data is being captured and stored by the websites or online platforms we visit or participate with. Even with all the tracking and tracing apps and protocols rolled out haphazardly in the midst of Covid-19, our personal data security and privacy is greatly at risk.

Best Defense is Offense

We’ve always heard this stratagem and yet it does strike good sense when it comes to protecting our life’s precious data. Even for businesses, new data protection laws and regulatory compliance would require these entities to maintain adequate security systems and postures to safeguard its customer’s data. Rather than just waiting to be attacked and reacting to the attack, we can actually change our security layers and posture in redefining how we protect our data and actively preventing attacks.

Getting an End-Point Detection and Remediation (EDR) system to protect your data is your best investment to defend and actively seek out threats to your life’s or business’s data vaults. Bitdefender’s internationally acclaimed machine-learning heuristics have protected millions of users from undetected malware threats even before they were formally detected or reported by cyber-security agencies and monitoring organizations. Furthermore, Bitdefender’s EDR tools are lightweight and easy to implement and manage across multiple devices and working environments to ensure we’re well protected in our data-bubble ecosystem even with virtual machines and VPNs tunneling about.

Backup, backup and more backup!

The only way to really insure that our data is incorruptible and highly sustainable is to ensure that it is constantly being backed-up. No amount of devices or software or tools can recover lost data, and even if there were, the cost of recovery would be more than heartbreak and dried tears. Some of us do regular backups but due to the data size and time limitation, we hardly keep the routine altogether unless something has happened and we need to do one right away.

Windows and Macintosh backups are heavy and slow. Even its backup image file size is enormous and the more frequent backups we run, the space to store these backup images becomes a new problem. Even recovering from these backup images is painstakingly slow, and may not guarantee 100% all data have been restored as some files that were not pre-selected for backup would never be in there. But what about our cloud storage? How do we ever run a backup there? The answer is, none. Cloud storage services have no backup services, unless you are already paying for its premium plans.

This is where we should all take charge ourselves and implement a good data backup and recovery software like Macrium Reflect. Its rapid backup and imaging process helps speed up our routine backups and help keep up with our rapid data and digital lifestyle. Gone were the days when a laptop or desktop hard disk would take hours and even days to do a single incremental backup. With Macrium Reflect, even the image files of our entire hard disk are small and incorruptible and easy to store in a secure data vault away from ransomware threats. This gives individuals and businesses plenty of assurances that in the event of unforeseen circumstances or situations like hardware failure, their data is easily recoverable within minutes to the most recent event.

Based on a recent case study of a client using Macrium Reflect, the entire organization’s server files including its boot partitions and OS settings was backup-ed in 7 minutes! Best part is, Macrium Reflect can be automated so you never have to worry when or if the last backup was done.

Driving up the wall

“Warning! Insufficient Memory or Space.” Alert dialogues that drive you up the wall. Worse still is, where did you keep your last backup thumb-drive. And is there enough space left on that device?

Some of us may have this idea of storing our most important data separately on thumb-drives, memory cards or even external hard drives just for assurance sake. But not all of these solutions are indestructible or able to store data perpetually. Some of these drives may eventually get corrupted due to physical wear or bad sectors. Sometimes even disappear or go missing altogether. Worst part is, these devices can only store up to a certain capacity and we may have to acquire numerous amounts of these to store all of our critical life’s data. But what if they fall into the wrong hands?

We’re not against thumb-drives or external devices. But doing backup the right way is even more important. For example, just copying and pasting whole folders or archived folders doesn’t really save space in the backup storage unit. It is simply multiplying the copies of the files you have and it really isn’t a thorough backup. Using Macrium Reflect, you can take a snapshot of your entire drive and back that up away in case of future needs. The backup image is so small and easy to recover at a moment’s notice. Also, better to have everything as is and back to the way it was, and not having to reinstall everything again from scratch.

If you’re ever afraid of your smart device falling into the wrong hands, Bitdefender’s Total Security solution allows users to remotely and securely wipe the contents within a misplaced device to prevent the data within from being used as ransom or other ill purposes. Also, users can encrypt the device to prevent the perpetrator from attempting to recover the data, which may include digital wallets, passwords and banking apps. It also dissuades the unauthorized user from attempting to do a factory reset to resell the device on the market.

Most of us would be using or would have used Google Drive and its related cloud sharing apps. But how many of us realize that the use of these tools to publicly collect personal data are not compliant with personal data and privacy protection acts? There are limited security features to protect these online collaborative platforms as to how data, that are collected and stored within, are being used, managed and shared. It is entirely up to the Google Drive’s owner to administrate and protect all those personal data. Yet, any shared-user can have access to these folders or files and easily download the whole bunch of personal data and contact details for personal use. Also with contact tracing apps that capture your GPS locations every now and then, it definitely doesn’t feel good to be stalked 24 x 7 everyday, especially by a private contractor entity?

Be in Control

It is highly recommended for us to educate each ourselves to be in control with our own personal data and protection. Relying on assurances and weak warranties from freemium apps and unprofessional developers is as good as you pawning off your precious data. You’d have to pay a hefty amount to get it back! This is why we constantly remind our clients to be in control of their personal or business data directly. By learning all there is to data security and protection, users themselves can determine their standard operating procedures and backup plans to suit their own digital lifestyle and safeguards.

First things first, always get a good EDR system like Bitdefender’s Gravityzone solutions to protect all your digital assets and end-points. It also has safety and privacy safeguards to prevent unwanted eyes or traces on you and your data. Next, review your data storage requirements and plan ahead with daily backups to ensure you don’t lose a bit of your precious data to unwarranted user actions, software attacks or even hardware failures. Macrium Reflect maintains your routine backup in minutes and is able to help rebuild your data in the event of a recovery process. Macrium Reflect even comes inclusive with a 1 year 24 x 7 support service for the first year of subscription.

Having frequent backups is the second layer of defense against ransomware or any other form of threats to our data. Secured and encrypted backups can save businesses from unwarranted user action on their data, including damages done by disgruntled employees. On a personal level as well, it is a good habit to keep copies of our life’s data and memories especially in our ever increasing digital lifestyle, every now and then.

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