Keeping Data Safe
There are so may situations where we need to consider how to keep data safe.
- Doctors need to keep data about their patients.
- Police need to keep data about criminals and investigations.
- Students need to keep data about their courses eg revision notes.
It is possible for our digital data to become accidentally or intentionally damaged, changed or deleted.
But data is valuable so we should be aware of how we can keep it safe.
Accidents
Have you ever accidentally deleted a file? In many cases, we can look in the recycle bin of our computer but it is still possible to accidentally delete files forever.
There are a couple of ways that you can protect yourself from accidentally deleting or losing your data:
Create backups
You are on the bus on the way home. You fall asleep. In a panic you wake up and realise your stop is near. You press the bell, rush to the door and get off. Only later do you realise that you have left your laptop on the bus.
You call the bus company but there is no sign of your precious device, full of your precious data.
It is not the end of the world, however, because you created backups of your data in the cloud.
You are not the only one who backs up your data.
- Many banks back up their data 2 or 3 times a day.
- Doctors usually back up their data about patients once a day.
- Graphic design students at college back up their work everytime they make significant progress on a project.
There are a variety of mediums that can be used to back up digital data:
| medium | example |
|---|---|
| magnetic media | external hard disk drive, magnetic tape |
| optical media | CDs, DVDs, Blu ray disks |
| cloud storage | some email providers also provide online storage for their users |
verification
Pay attention to pop-up boxes that are trying to alert you of something when you are saving data on your computer.
If you accidentally click Yes you will lose the original file.
This form of security forces the user to stop and think... but it doesn't always work. Some people just keep clicking!