The Importance of Backups While Traveling

The Importance of Backups While Traveling – There are tons of reasons why you must back your devices, meaning your smartphones, laptops, tablets – any device where you store important or sensitive information.

You wouldn’t want to not have a spare key for the house, would you? Would you ever drive your car without a spare tire in the back?

The answer to these questions, hopefully, is a resolute no. There are some backups we might do without, such as a spare umbrella, but some of the backups we make in our lives are absolutely critical. Leah Kelley/Pexels.com

Well, it is kind of the same sentiment when it comes to having a backup available for all of your devices. What is more, a backup can literally save your life.

Perhaps the former sounds a tad too much for you but think about the following: most of us store important information on our devices these days.

Most times, that information cannot simply be replaced. If this information is lost, it would undoubtedly cause us a lot of grief, anguish, anger, or all of the former.

For instance, perhaps some of us hold business data on our devices, so losing it would mean compromising our livelihoods.

Such is the nature of data these days. Sometimes, not having a backup of your device means you’ve just lost all of your cryptocurrency.

Other times, it means you’ve lost your dearest memories of your late grandparents. Whatever the case may be, backing up your devices is among the top three most important best practices you must get used to doing.

Similarly, not having data backed up while traveling is asking for trouble. Let’s get into why this is and what you can do about it!

Why Are Backups Important While Traveling?

Traveling is an activity that almost everyone alive has had to partake in at least once in their lives. It is simply a necessity to travel, whether it is for “leisure or business” as they so often say at airports.

Now, why is traveling specific and why do backups have to do with traveling? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

The thing is, sizable public transportation areas such as airports, bus terminals, train stations, and the corresponding hotels and accommodations are like an ant farm.

Hundreds of millions of people are moving around on thousands of flights, buses, trains, and more every minute of every day.

Now, just imagine how many devices that it is in total. Now, let’s think about how many of these devices are backed up, if at all.

Probably about half. That means that millions of photos, videos and other private information can be gone in the blink of an eye.

Secondly, let’s think about the risks and why exactly it is important to backup data on your devices. Now, you probably own at least a modern smartphone.

You could also be the proud owner of a laptop and a tablet. You might also be carrying extra storage with you such as external hard disks or thumb drives.

Now, we get to the main topic: cyber security and human error risks that threaten our precious data. What does this mean exactly? Well, here is a list of things that can happen to our devices when traveling;

• Cybercriminal compromise via hacked WiFi hotspots
• Physical loss of a device
• Corruption of data
• Theft of a device
• Locking ourselves out of our device
• An issue with the password or username
• Misconfiguration or human error leading to data loss

As you can see, there is quite a bit to be worried about. However, most of this goes over our heads as we are too busy traveling, whether it is for leisure or business.

If you do not have a backup of your data, everything on your devices such as your memories or hard work could be gone in the blink of an eye, and nobody could return that data.

You could be hacked while traveling, you could lose your device, or your device could be corrupted.

Cybersecurity experts usually say the same thing, and that is that you must keep at least a few backups on different mediums.

In fact, this topic is of extreme importance to anyone in the security community. A simple lack of backup is usually the culprit and can cause millions of dollars of damage.

Also, these backups need to be up-to-date, in case any of the above happens to you. This means having a backup on the cloud, on an offline disk as well as on your device.

Backing up data is a practice that the world’s largest companies always take extremely seriously, for obvious reasons!

Apart from just backing up your data on a daily or at least weekly basis, there are some common sense device security measures you must employ in your daily life to optimally protect your data.

Some of these practices include using a virtual private network or VPN at all times while connected to the internet. This will prevent cyber criminals from intercepting your connection while you travel.

Secondly, you need a premium anti-malware program for those cybercriminals. Third, make sure you employ a good premium backup software that can backup all of your devices safely and securely.

At the end of the day, most of us do not focus on our devices other than for taking the odd picture while rushing at airports, bus terminals, train stations, or while resting at hotels.

The issue is, that this lack of attention can have us connecting to rigged WiFi hotspots, losing our devices, having our devices stolen as well as misconfiguring our devices in a rush.

You must always ensure that all of your devices are updated to the latest software and that you have the “Find My Device” always enabled, no matter what brand your device is in case you physically lose it.

In general, try to pay more attention to your devices’ security while traveling, as a lot of bad scenarios can take place which can be avoided easily with a bit of common sense, preparation, and patience in tow.

Related CTN News:

What Is The Difference Between A Curriculum Vitae And A Resume?

Music: Online Keyboard and Piano Classes

New Visions Charter School for Advanced Math and Science in 2022