This post is not about insurance or the meaning of life, digital or otherwise. Rather, it is an attempt to help people understand the importance of securing their personal content in the cloud. Disclaimer: I work for a company that provides personal cloud solutions. Despite this, I firmly believe that almost anyone who uses smartphones, laptops and other mobile devices can greatly benefit from doing this.
Why should you care what your digital life is worth? Before getting wrapped up in the ‘worth’ part, the good news is that there are now ways to protect your digital life that are practically free and effortless, and that provide other benefits as a bonus.
Let’s start with an anecdote. Every day, I use a smartphone and different laptops and tablets at home and work. As someone who has worked their adult life in tech, I know I should back up my digital stuff, most likely to avoid losing it due to hardware failure. I also know there are other things I should do every day but don’t always do those, either :). I work in a company with less than 100 people, we are located all over the world, and some of our personal backup practices are left to our own devices (pun intended). I try to make sure my important stuff is always backed up, although everything is not backed up all the time as this would be a major undertaking.
A few weeks ago, my laptop caught a virus, despite using the latest security software, which rendered its files unusable. My laptop had a lot of truly irreplaceable files. I could have spent a lot of time and money to try to fix this but fortunately, all of my important digital content was in the cloud. An easier and faster action was to reformat the hard disk and restore only what was needed from my personal cloud. It took a couple of hours.
Although this situation concerned a laptop, most people are familiar with losing information on phones, either themselves or people they know. Backup services on mobile devices are not always used, up-to-date or reliable. As more mobile devices contain more data, people’s digital lives grow more complex. Multiple backup systems, while well intended, add to complexity rather than reduce it.
This post is also not about backups. It is about personal clouds that work with smartphones, laptops and tablets. Rather than just back things up for a once-in-a-blue-moon restore, it continuously organizes everything in a useful way so that a) your entire digital life is in one secure place; and 2) rather than a hodgepodge of folders, files and other things from different devices and places, it organizes everything cohesively. They let you view and share all of your pictures via one place, regardless of where they came from. You can do this on all of your devices and the web. Same for the rest of your digital life i.e. videos, files, music, contacts and calendars are auto-organized. It’s like Dropbox or Google Drive except not just files, it is all of your important stuff, from everywhere you want, auto-organized in a useful mobile way.
Isn’t it risky to store all of your digital stuff in one place? A co-worker recently showed me a video of Edward Snowden talking about how to let people know that their online data is not immune to snooping. It contained vulgar language which I found funny but others might find offensive. He said that any data sent via the internet is subject to being hacked. He gave an example of data sent from point A to B in the U.S., even though the data originates and ends on U.S. servers, it could travel outside of the U.S. where different privacy laws and practices apply.
Does it concern me that someone could gain unauthorized access to my private life? Yes. Do I think it has happened? Probably. Does it make me think twice about storing things online? Yes. Does it stop me from storing things online? No. 99% of my digital life is in the cloud. I am more concerned about hardware loss or software viruses than amorphous groups accessing my stuff (after all, the IRS already has my tax returns :). My guess is that many people believe similarly. One’s digital life involves a balancing act between convenience and privacy.
Would you be upset if your phone, laptop or other mobile devices were lost or its data compromised? Of course. Are you in the tiny minority who diligently backs up your entire digital life every day?
If not, there are personal clouds that are free and once set up, effortless. Beyond backup, they provide a bonus, like keeping your digital life auto-organized and making it easy to share things in ways you like. They generally employ good security and user privacy practices. They are great for accessing your entire digital life history from any device. I have an aging parent who is starting to lose their memory, do you think they would like an easy way to recall their memories? You and future generations can.
Many people are familiar with Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and OneDrive. These services work well although with the exception of Dropbox, they work best on their own devices e.g. iCloud works best on Apple devices but not Android or Windows and so forth. Research shows that more than 90% of people use multiple brands of devices. It is helpful to use a service that works well across multiple ecosystems i.e. that supports all major brands. Otherwise, you end up with multiple personal clouds which like multiple backup systems, adds rather than reduces complexity. This also might make it hard to switch to a different brand of device in the future.
Regarding privacy, some people may be concerned that their digital life resides with a company that mines it for advertising or that stores it in a public cloud that is more vulnerable to prying. An alternative is personal clouds from mobile operators. User data is stored in private clouds that are generally not mined. These companies tend to be more regulated than tech companies and are often required to manage user data more stringently. For people who want the benefit of their digital life in one place but also would like it to be more secure, a carrier personal cloud can be better.
In sum, when it comes to your digital life, it’s like real life, an ounce of prevention can be worth a pound of cure. For a carefree digital future, it’s worthwhile to spend a little time now to use a personal cloud.
