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How to secure important information using the cloud

Recently a friend of mine sent me a very alarming message. It was an image of his laptop screen with the prompt, “Boot device not found”. That is a message that no one wants to see especially when the functioning of a device means everything to you. 

After having him do some basic troubleshooting which yielded no pleasing results I told him to get the laptop to me and I’ll do a detailed assessment. He got the machine to me in less than an hour, even breaking the curfew.. (but let’s keep that between us). So you can imagine how critical this was. 

After getting the laptop in hand, I removed the hard drive to rule out any issue with the controller on the motherboard. I inserted the drive in my USB hard drive dock, powered it on and BOOM….. silence. There wasn’t the usually audible indicator when a USB device is plugged in. On inspecting the drive, it was unusually still for a drive with spinning disks. The hard drive was dead. Relating this finding to my friend, I noted the blank look of despair on his face. The look that said I lost everything. I asked just to confirm, did you have backups? Were you using Dropbox? He replied, no. 

This reminds me of an experience I had a few years ago while pursuing my degree, where I lost data but I was able to recover from it by having data backed up to the cloud. For those who don’t already know, cloud storage as defined by TechTarget is a service model in which data is maintained, managed and backed up remotely and made available to users over a network (typically the Internet). In simple terms, you get a storage location on the internet where you can store a backup of your files and have access to them anywhere providing you have internet access. 

I have been using cloud storage solutions including Dropbox, one of the more popular cloud storage services for a few years now. In 2011 when I started Excelsior Community College I created a second Dropbox account with the sole purpose of storing all my school work (soft copies of handouts, assignments, coursework etc.). I wanted to ensure that especially as it relates to coursework, I could pull up any of them at any given time just in case a lecturer said that they can’t find what I submitted.

On Friday, May 31, 2013, I had final coursework to hand in for my Systems Development course. As it was a course that had no final exam, my grade was dependent on all the documents that we had to prepare following the Systems Development Life Cycle along with a fully functional database-driven application. The entire portfolio was about 85% complete as the user manual for the application was not finished. Up until this point the application and its database were only stored on my computer. That evening I decided to move the application to the Dropbox folder to have everything in one place before burning it to a CD. I handed in the course work that evening, with the intention of handing in the user manual the following Monday.

That very evening while I was in the Carib 5 Cinema enjoying Fast and Furious 6, the unthinkable happened! My vehicle was stolen from the venue’s parking lot and with it my laptop containing all my school work. It was undoubtedly the worst night of my life.

To complete the user manual, the working application was needed to create screenshots to provide visuals of tasks to be performed in the application. Luckily I had copied the application to Dropbox. I had to grant access to my files to another member of the group using Dropbox’s sharing feature, so she could get the application running on her computer and finish creating the manual. I don’t even want to think of the repercussions had I not taken steps to secure important information using Dropbox for backups. 

The manual was completed and handed to the lecturer. We got an A- for that course!

I learned two lessons from that experience. The first was, never to leave anything of value in your vehicle no matter what. Secondly, it was reinforced, always have at least one other copy of your valuable data. I would advise anyone who uses a computer to start utilizing some form of cloud storage service if you value your data and want to save yourself from unnecessary heartache. Creating and utilizing cloud storage is not difficult and you may already have it and not realize it. Most of the major players in the cloud storage industry offer free tiers with the option to pay a monthly or yearly subscription for larger storage capacities. Popular options include:

  • Dropbox – Get 2GB of storage free with paid storage ranging from 3GB to Unlimited. 
  • Google Drive – If you have a Gmail account, then you already have cloud storage. All Gmail users have 15GB of free storage that is shared between all your Google applications. Paid options with Google One range from 100GB to 2TB.
  • Microsoft OneDrive – All users with a Microsoft email account (Hotmail, Live, Outlook, etc) receive 5GB of storage for free. Paid options range from 100GB to 1TB.
  • Mega – Get 20GB with the creation of a free account with paid storage ranging from 400GB to a whopping 16TB.

These solutions provide a client-side application that you will need to install on your desktop or laptop computer. Once installed, a folder will be created on your system, or in the case with the new Google Drive, an actual drive named Google Drive mapped with the letter G. The Microsoft OneDrive client is pre-installed on Windows 10. Any files you place in these locations will be automatically uploaded to your cloud storage and the changes immediately synced once you have or regain internet access. 

Microsoft OneDrive Folder and Google Drive mapped drive

Armed with this information, assess the data being store on your devices and determine what is critical that you need to ensure you have at least one other copy of. Choose a cloud solution and make the effort now to secure your important information.

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