BLOG - online backup

According to reports in the Telegraph and elsewhere, a professor at Umeå university in Sweden received a USB stick by post with a backup of the data from his laptop which had been stolen a week beforehand.

The professor said to the local Västerbottens-Kuriren newspaper "Often when people lose their computers and cameras, it is understandably not the gadget itself that is the most important. The content is often irreplaceable." So, professor, interested in online backup now?!

Some of the people we talk to have asked for advice on which online backup service to use. While the key advice is to pick a service that suits your needs and make sure that regular backups are both carried out and verified, it makes sense for us to place knowledge of the sector here online.

We are therefore preparing the information in what - hopefully! - will be both easy to understand and easy to compare the main products and services that are on the market. We expect to have the first comparison, of services for home / personal online backup within the next few days.

The BBC has said it "takes thefts very seriously" after a Freedom of Information request revealed that the corporation had lost, or had stolen, 146 laptops, 65 mobiles and 17 Blackberry devices over a two year period.

After some items were recovered, the net value of the missing hardware was put at £217,569. No information was readily apparent as to whether the laptops - or phones - had been properly backed up, or whether the files on the laptops had been encrypted. And obviously the low cost laptop tracker software had not been installed!

Figures supplied in response to a Freedom of Information request indicate that the MOD lost 340 laptops in two years, according to LEWIS PR. The hardware cost alone was put at £620,000.

Just 157 of these - below half - had had their data encrypted. And obviously the low cost laptop tracker software had not been installed!

With an obvious interest in topics relating to backing up computer files and protecting your data, matters relating to cloud storage, data encryption, and finding lost or stolen laptops or phones tend to attract my interest. And I'm not normally shy about making a comment! But the comments have been either to myself or those (unfortunate enough?) to be near me at the time, and not to the "wider world".

So - all you lucky readers of this website: you're going to have the benefit of my thoughts, experience ("no point in getting older, if you don't get wiser" as my late aunt used to say) and wisdom in a new online backup blog starting right here.