You will be surprised at the lack of data protection small businesses give themselves.

The key questions you should be asking yourself are:

• Have I stored my data off site away from my offices?
• What happens if my office is flooded or burnt to the ground?
• How often have I backed up my data.

This was something I had to consider when I started my own business since I had an office in the house and no way of putting my back up’s off site. I opted for a cloud solution, where the data is stored locally on my PC and synced to the cloud. So if the worst came to the worst my data is backed up as I am saving it, plus it is off site. This solution ticks all the right boxes for me and probably a fair few other businesses.

When considering a cloud solution I would stick with the companies you would think will be around long before we have shuffled off this mortal world. Therefore I would recommend Google Drive or Drop box, as both these providers have been around for a long while and security is of an extremely high standard, plus they both save to your desk top as well as the cloud.

• Tip 1 Don’t be cheap and get the free lighter version if you have a fair bit of data. Pay for it as it is not that much compared to the cost of trying to replace lost data.
• Tip 2 Password everything, use a combination of capital letters, numbers and even symbols
• Tip 3 Don’t make your password too obvious or indeed too hard to remember
• Tip 4 Don’t let windows auto save your passwords, if your computer gets pinched they will have access to all your data. Not very smart