It's All In The Cloud, So I'm Good. Right?
Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive have made a lot of good improvements to their service over the last two years that make them an even better service than they were before. Being able to access and update your files from multiple devices can be a game changer depending on how your life works, and having your files saved on your computer and in the cloud adds an extra layer of safety if the hard drive on your laptop has a catastrophic failure.
But what if the worst case scenario happens and you are hacked? Once they have taken over your computer, the first thing the hacker is going to try to do is gain access to your sync service, and then change the password on you. If they are able to do that and you don’t have the data saved somewhere else, you have a big problem. Getting your Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive back under your control can take a very, very long time.
I try not to be that guy who trys to scare people into taking action, but the possibility of losing access to your computers and data is the one thing we IT folks lose sleep over. It’s a risk we all face no matter how good our cybersecurity setup is, so we need to make sure we have a plan in place for this worst case scenario.
Syncs, Backups, And Restore
Let’s start with a few definitions for what these words mean when we are talking about your files and software:
- Sync: Sync services save a copy of the files on your computer to the cloud. That means you have at least two copies, one on your computer, and one in the cloud. That can also mean if you delete a document, it gets deleted in two places. Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive are the two most popular sync services, and both are very good options.
- Backup: Backups are a snapshot of some portion of the files and programs stored on your computer at a specific point in time. Usually, this is done by a piece of software that will create a backup daily, which allows you to go back and retrieve a file if it disappears from your system for some reason (it happens).
- Restore: Restore is the process of retrieving information from a backup. Let’s say you leave work on Tuesday and come back on Wednesday to find that the office suite above you flooded and your computer is underneath a waterfall (it happens). In this particular scenario, either a backup or sync will help you get your documents back, but a backup will be much faster, and if you have a full image of your hard disk you may not even need to reload all of your software.
The Limitations Of Sync Services
There are two key limitations of sync services that are important to understand:
- They sync your files, but not your software. If you have a catastrophic failure of your hard drive and you do not have a full backup of the drive, you will have to manually reload the operating system and software from scratch. Restoring from a backup can get you back up an running much, much faster.
- If the hackers get into your computer, they will try to take over your sync service. Third party, offsite backups are much harder for hackers to get into, which means they provide an extra layer of security.
How To Keep My Stuff Safe
Getting the right cybersecurity in place and making sure that everyone in your organization is using all of the latest security measure like Two Factor Authentication can go a long way to ensuring that you have done what you can to keep the hackers out, and setting up a good backup solution and disaster recovery plan will help to get you back up and running if they somehow manage to get in anyway. If you’re not sure whether or not your data security plan is up to speed, schedule a free consultation with me and let’s talk