The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) joins the public in celebrating World Backup Day. World Backup Day, commemorated on March 31 each year originally began as World Backup Month. The event was initiated by a hard drive company, Maxtor, which was later acquired by Seagate Technology.
A statement signed by the Agency’s Head, Corporate Affairs and External Relations, Mrs Hadiza Umar, noted that this year’s event is timely because reminders of data protection are needed more than ever due to the sudden global shift to work-from-home. Furthermore, World Back-up Day aims to raise awareness concerning the role of data in our lives and consequently the importance of undertaking regular data backup.
Data backup is the process of keeping a clean second copy of any important digital content to guarantee availability; even when a computer crashes, cell phones or tablets get lost, data becomes corrupted, or gets destroyed by a virus.
With Nigeria’s drive for a vibrant Digital Economy, which intends to encourage both Public and Private institutions to promote their services online, there is potential to generate a massive amount of data. Therefore, making a backup copy of valuable data can make all the difference when data loss or a compromise occurs.
In the statement to commemorate the Day, NITDA encouraged the public to safely store backup copies of all valuable data from servers, personal electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, and tablets regularly. The Agency further advised the public to adopt some measures in order to back up their data securely.
These steps include backing up data daily to an external storage device such as Flash Drive, Memory Card, HardDisk Drive (HDD) or Solid State Drive (SSD), or Cloud Storage. Also individuals can follow the 3/2/1 backup rule with three copies of the data, two on different media types, and one remote copy (cloud storage).
“Be sure to back up your data regularly and encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to do the same,” the statement concluded.
