- 36.6 per cent of Germans back up their most important private data less often than once a year or never
- eco survey on World Backup Day on 31 March, the international day of data backup
- eco Association gives 5 tips for simple and secure backups
Unfortunately, many only realise how important backups are when it is too late. Whether it’s a hardware failure, a device loss or a hacker attack – holiday and family pictures on the mobile phone or mail traffic and documents on the PC are irretrievably lost. “Regular backups are the only way to reliably protect your own data from various loss scenarios,” says Markus Schaffrin, Security Expert and Head of Member Services at eco – Association of the Internet Industry. “The shorter the intervals between backups, the less data is lost if the worst comes to the worst.” He recommends backing up important data at least weekly, and preferably in two ways – for example, in the cloud and an external hard drive.
However, only a minority of people in Germany adhere to this. Only one in five (20 per cent) update their most important data weekly or more often. Only every third person in Germany (33.8 per cent) updates at least monthly. This is the result of a representative survey conducted by the opinion research company Civey on behalf of the eco Association. 17.5 per cent back up their data at least once or twice a year. Less often than once a year, 20.9 per cent back up their data, while 15.7 per cent even say they never back it up. That is even more than was the case four years ago. In 2019, in a comparable survey, 10.6 per cent said they never back up their data.
Set up automated backups via cloud or hard drive
There are many simple ways to reliably protect important data from loss by means of regular backups. The eco expert Markus Schaffrin gives the following tips:
- The cloud backup solution enables data to be backed up automatically. Some popular options are Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and OneDrive. Many mobile phone manufacturers also offer their own apps to store the data of a person’s own smartphone or the pictures online encrypted in the cloud.
- For those who prefer to back up data locally, they can use an external hard drive. At least once a week, data can be backed up manually or automatically using Windows Backup (PC) or Time Machine (Mac). There is also a wide range of backup software that can create and manage backups automatically.
- If there is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) system in the household, data can also be automatically backed up there. A NAS is a device that is connected to the network and serves as a central storage location for data.
- The eco Association recommends the safest option, which is a combination of cloud backup and external hard drive or NAS to back up data to multiple locations. Use this double backup option for important data and ensure updates at least once a week via both methods.
How often do you usually back up your most important private data by creating a backup copy?
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* The opinion research company Civey surveyed 2500 people between 15 and 16 February 2023 on behalf of eco. The results are representative of the German population aged 18 and over. The statistical error of the overall results is 3.6 per cent.
