Back-Up At All Times

By Arthur Moses Opio

As we continue to share with you on ICT best practices, we encourage you to always read up and be a braced with the latest ICT information.

One of the best ICT tips you could ever learn and keep to heart is the “Practice of Backing Up Your Information”. We have reached a point in the technology age, where smart phones and the APPS within encourage you to back-up. e.g you can back-up your WhatsApp chats. They could come in handy at some point in life.

Backups can be done online using the cloud computing services like Google Drive, One Drive, Drop Box etc.
You could be wondering what are these cloud computing services. Almost everyone who has an email address like Gmail or Yahoo has these services attached to them.

If you don’t know how to go about this, you can visit these links:-
Google Drive - https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2424384?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
One Drive - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17184/windows-10-onedrive

For more information ask your college system administrators to show you how to access and use these services.

One of the reasons we are reminding you to Back up is because your computer can be
1.Stolen.
2.Damaged (physically/software failures)
3.Compromised by anyone
4.Hacked

There is a time I had just taught someone how to backup their data and a week later, the computer was stolen. All we had to do was access his google drive and download all the folders and files that had been uploaded.

Hackers are increasingly doing all they can to get to people, organizations, companies, institutions to compromise their systems and ask for a ransom. To know more about a RANSOM see this link http://answers.mak.ac.ug/security/understanding-ransomware.

Case Study

There was an attack in the town of Midland, Ontario, Canada. Cybercriminals infected their servers with a nasty ransomware on the 1st September at about 2:00 am. It is said that the attack left the town’s computers inoperative for about 48 hours and disrupted email services, payment processing, issuing of permits, reloading traffic cards and processing requests for marriage applications.
Read more about this case from this link https://www.hackread.com/canadian-town-forced-to-pay-bitcoin-after-nasty-ransomware-attack/
They had no choice but to pay the ransom as guided by their Security Experts.

Back Up At All Times

The major aim of writing this is to let you the users of these computers, email services know that it can cost you dearly when the data you have compiled after a very long period of time is lost because you did not take measures to secure yourself. Since we are in an institution that is generating knowledge everyday, it is good to invest your time in understanding how to use some of these technologies.

Please BACKUP every day, every week, every month.