A simple reminder, folks. BACK UP DE DATA! Sitting in class today, it struck me like a lightening bolt! I haven't backed up in a loooong while. Big Bsc. IT fella, in de scene long time now and I FORGET to back UP!?
Dr. Mohan today was talking about the different areas of risks when it comes to data/information. He said that alot of times when we think about the risks associated with data we think about sabotage, disgruntled employees (might i also include disgruntled students.....), terrorism, etc. He then asked a very simple yet important question. What if your hard drive TODAY decides to crash? *eyes open widely!* uhmm..you know...i have alot of stuff on my computer that I don't really want to lose, soooooo. *inserts blank cd rom into drive* I think i have some work to do.
Dr. Mohan also spoke about risk avoidance and risk minimization when it comes to our data. In risk avoidance, specific steps should be taken to avoid the potential worst happening. Some of these steps might include, ensuring that you have the lastest virus definitions installed on your computer, backing up data *computer silently burns info on to disk in the background*, installing the latest patches for your software so you can be shielded from malicious attacks, etc. We could also include using devices such as UPS (uninterrupted power supplies) and BPS (backup power supplies) to make sure that our machines in the event of a power outage, don't go down and we have sufficient time to complete what we were doing.
Risk minimization dealt with WHEN the worst possible scenario occured, exactly how the effects of this problem could be mitigated. Very interesting class today! The INFO 1400 ball is slowly starting to roll. lol!