If you have a reliable, high-speed Internet connection, you can back up your system and data online. While this isn’t a solution for many, if you live or work in an urban area your cable or telephone provider may be able to supply enough bandwidth for the task.
Read moreIn my computer security classes, I tease my students that “Backups are good; restores are better.” The unfortunate fact of life is that computer hardware wears out and stops working. Software has bugs. Unfortunately, systems sometimes become infested with malware — so-called malicious software. A particularly ugly kind of attack, such as CryptoLocker, is called “Ransomware.” As Cybersecurity professionals, we call it crypto-viral extortion when a malware attack encrypts a user’s files and then demands payment to retrieve the key to restore the data.
Read moreAlthough many may argue the point, technology implementation for big data (and technology implementation in general) is usually the easy part. There’s a script to install it, there are online resources for answering questions, and if all else fails, we can outsource the setup and maintenance. However, structuring and managing teams of individuals who install, maintain and use those systems is no easy task.
Read morePermanent data storage normally uses HDD technology originally developed by IBM in the mid 1950s. Today, HDDs are typically aggregated into arrays in storage appliances using various methods to provide redundancy in case of the failure of any single HDD. In this case, the array, or a portion of the storage space in the array, will be presented to a client OS as a logical unit (LUN). This is not yet logical volume management (LVM), however, the LUN still appears to the OS as a single, large-capacity storage device. For LVM purposes, there is no functional difference between a local HDD and a LUN, so we will simply call either type of storage a disk.
Read moreMarch 31 is World Backup Day.
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