Report Suggests About 45% Indians do not Back up Their Data

Nearly half of Indians do not back up because they think their data or files are not important enough and most of those who back up their data, do it once a month, a survey said on Monday. Other reasons cited by the respondents for not backing up their data included not knowing how to do it, not having the time and forgetting about it, according to the survey by cybersecurity company Avast. "It could be that many aren't aware they are backing up, as it could be happening automatically, in the background, however, others really might not be backing up at all, thinking it is not worth it," Luis Corrons, Security Evangelist at Avast, said in a statement.

"Losing personal documents, photos and videos can be a painful experience and it's not until this happens that they realize how valuable it actually is," Corrons added. Of those who do back up their data, nearly 42 percent Indians back up to cloud storage, 36 percent back up their data to an external hard drive, 23 percent back up to a USB or flash disk, 18 percent back up their phone to their PC, and 10 percent back up to a network storage drive, the results showed. Corrons recommended to back up data to two different locations, like the cloud, and physical storage, like an external hard drive.

When it comes to iPhone and Android phone owners, the percentage that backs up is nearly the same, 69 percent and 70 percent respectively. The percentage of smartphone owners that don't know how to back up their data does not vary much between iPhone and Android owners, with 13 percent and 17 percent claiming not knowing how to, respectively, the study revealed. Data loss can be caused by users accidentally deleting their data themselves, hardware damage and failure, as well as malware, causing valuable data such as photos, videos, documents, and messages to be lost forever. Ransomware and other malware, such as wipers, can either encrypt or completely destroy files, and there is no guarantee that files can be decrypted if a ransom is paid. The survey was conducted among 728 Avast and AVG users between February 20-March 25.