Information and Communication Technology Office (ICTO) Data loss happens all the time. Do you have a data backup plan? | Information and Communication Technology Office (ICTO)

Among the information security measures, having a good backup plan is very important. Actually, the only way to protect yourself against valuable data loss is through regular backups. Ideally, backup of important files should be done at least once a week, or every day, depending on how critical they are to you.

Occasionally, we notice the incidents about losing important documents or valuable family photos due to the hard disk crashed or mobile phone misplaced. In addition, you might be the victim of ransomware or any malicious attacks, which causes you to reinstall the computer with no choices and give up the data stored in the computer. Currently, the computers provided by ICTO are installed with automatic backup programs by default. However, for some computers which were not provided by ICTO, it is easy to be neglected about data backup. Therefore, in order to make it easy for you to develop a safe and reliable backup solution, here are some tips which may help you:

Data loss happens all the time, but it is entirely preventable. You just need to create a backup plan;
Your critical data should never be stored in a single location;
The ideal backup solution will typically include both a cloud based backup (e.g. Cloud Drive and Cloud Backup Service) and an offline backup utility (e.g., external hard drives, flash drives) to ensure your data is secure no matter what happens to your mobile device or computer;
Choosing a backup software with simple operations and automatic backups function will take you less time to set up and maintain;
Regularly test your backup solution to ensure you can recover your data in the event that you do actually need to restore from a backup.

Besides computers, it is also necessary to conduct data backup for mobile devices. Currently, popular mobile devices usually provide built-in data backup features. For more details, you can refer to the official information of your mobile device. In case of choosing a cloud service, you must consider a secure and reliable service provider, no matter it is a free or paid service. In addition, most cloud service providers have data centers in different regions, and most of them will be located outside Macao. In case of using cloud services that involve the storage of sensitive data, it is important to consider whether they comply with relevant University policies and local laws and regulations.^{*1,2,3,4,5,6,7}

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