The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) on Wednesday called on Nigerians to ensure the protection of their data by duplicating them in safe places, to avoid loss.
Mrs. Hadiza Umar, the agency’s Head, Cooperate Affairs and External Relations, made the call in a statement she issued and signed in Abuja on the occasion of the commemoration of the World Backup Day.
World Backup Day, celebrated on March 31 annually, originally began as World Backup Month and was initiated by a hard drive company Maxtor. Maxtor was later acquired by Seagate Technology PLC, an American data storage company.
Umar explained that data backup was the process of keeping a clean second copy of any important digital content to guarantee availability in a situation of computer crash, missing cell phones or tablets, corrupt data, or virus infested data.
“This year’s event is timely because it is a reminder that data protection is needed more than ever due to the sudden global shift to work-from-home.
“Furthermore, World Backup Day aims to raise awareness concerning the role of data in our lives and consequently the importance of undertaking regular data backup.
“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.
“Making a backup copy of your valuable data can make all the difference when there is data loss or a compromise occurs,” Umar said.
She encouraged the public to safely store backup copies of all valuable data from servers, personal electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, and tablets regularly.
According to her, individuals can back up data daily to an external storage device like flash drive, memory card, hard disk drive, solid state drive, or cloud storage.
“Follow the 3/2/1 backup rule with three copies of your data, two on different media types, and one remote copy usually in cloud storage.
“Be sure to back-up your data regularly and encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to do the same,” she advised. (NAN)
