Last week I read a blog post on the anxiety inducing ordeal of San Francisco based writer Tienlon Ho who was locked out of her Google account for six long days. Tienlon found she couldn’t do much without access – including her taxes as she had been storing pertinent information throughout Google Apps.

The post entitled “Dumped! by Google” described how Tienlon was essentially kicked out of all things Google due to violating (unknowingly) Google’s terms of service. Tienlon like so many of us keep a tremendous amount of critical data in the cloud through Google Drive. From calendar appointments and contacts to passwords and personal notes, Google Apps has become the definitive place to store information. It’s web-based and easy. But what if you’re suddenly locked out? A situation that would easily lead to heart palpitations.

Teinlon found out why she had been dumped – she had uploaded a suspicious looking doc with various passwords on behalf of a client. This prompted her to start looking into Google’s policies discovering that Google reserves the right to “terminate your account at any time, for any reason, with or without notice.” The story does have a happy ending though as she was able to get her account up and running.

Stories like this often leads to questions on the safety and security of the cloud. So, is the cloud safe? Absolutely. But is cloud backup necessary? Of course. In Tienlon’s case, had she been using a cloud-to-cloud backup solution, she could have easily accessed the data she needed – instantly. It’s essential to have a Google Apps backup plan in place so that access to data is never lost. More people and businesses are turning to Google Apps for ease of use and collaboration. But just like you would have backed up that important college essay ten years ago, it’s crucial to backup cloud applications such as Google Apps.

According to Symantec’s 2013 Report “Avoiding the Hidden Costs of the Cloud“:

• 47% of enterprises lost data in the cloud and had to restore their information from backups
• 37% of SMBs have lost data in the cloud and had to restore their information from backups
• 66% of those organizations saw recovery operations fail

According to The Aberdeen Group’s Report “SaaS Data Loss: The Problem You Didn’t Know You Had”

• 32% of companies surveyed lost data from the cloud.

Of these instances,

• 47% were due to end-users deleting information
• 17% were users overwriting data
• 13% were because hackers deleted info

According to the Cloud Security Alliance’s Top 9 Cloud Security Threats in 2013

• Data Loss is the #2 reason for data loss (up from #5 in 2010)

According to the Boston Computing Network’s Data Loss Statistics

• 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster

According to CloudBackup’s Facts about Data Loss

• 20% of small to medium businesses will suffer a major disaster causing loss of critical data every 5 years. (Source: Richmond House Group)
• About 70% of business people have experienced (or will experience) data loss due to accidental deletion, disk or system failure, viruses, fire or some other disaster (Source: Carbonite, an online backup service)

You may notice that some of these stats actually contradict others. It may depend slightly on the number of companies surveyed, but in general, companies are not usually eager to admit they have suffered from these kind of hiccups. Telling the world that you accidentally deleted really important information just does not happen unless one’s hand is forced.

But regardless of whether it is 32% or 47%, up to almost half of companies have lost important business information in one way or the other — and oftentimes it was accidentally deleted.

Protect your business from these threats. If your data is on the cloud, then let Backupify help prevent you from becoming a statistic.

By definition, a cloud is hazy, foggy, vague and obscure. And when things are nebulous, our sense of worry heightens. Yet most of the time our fears of the unknown are unjustified, and they limit us more than they help us.

The kinds of fears we hear about the cloud are numerous.  Things like “If I put my data on the cloud, won’t it be open to the public?” to “How is my data safe if it’s in someone else’s possession?” to “Doesn’t Google control all the servers? What if they get struck by a thunderstorm?”.  CloudSuccess wrote a great summary of the unjustified fears commonly held by people considering SaaS applications.  The Top 10 Myths of Cloud Computing they list are:

1. My data is less secure
2. I won’t have full ownership of my data
3. My system won’t perform as well in the cloud
4. I’ll be caught by vendor ‘lock-in’
5. My business is too small for the cloud
6. My business is too big for the cloud
7. Everything on the internet/web is cloud
8. Cloud is cheaper than on-premise
9. Cloud = Virtualization
10. The cloud has more downtime

Just like each of these 10 myths above, many of the concerns we hear about the cloud are actually inaccurate. Security is not necessarily compromised on the cloud, especially for smaller companies that can’t afford enterprise level firewalls and security systems. Information won’t be open to the public, but ownership of data is not much different than when it is on-premise – your data will in most cases still be owned completely by you. Cloud-based apps have reliable connections and show downtimes lower than that of on-premise solutions.  And you can pretty simply migrate to the cloud or away from SaaS applications if you choose.

On the flipside, there is one major cloud-related concern people have that is quite valid. That is the concern of user error – how users can very easily delete, mislabel, misarchive, or override important information. Not taking proper precautions against this can result in accidental or purposeful deletion of important cloud-based data. In fact, 1 in 3 instances of data loss on the cloud are due to user error. Fortunately, there are easy ways (like backing up your cloud data and optimizing your web browser for your SaaS application) to mitigate the risks that are present in the cloud.

Our job at Backupify is to bring some clarity to the cloud and to allow education to alleviate the invalid fears our customers have. We want to show friends that the cloud is not as dangerous as most people think. And if you take proper precautions to secure your information, Google Apps for Business, Salesforce.com, and other cloud-based apps are excellent ways to streamline operations at your company, maximize productivity, and provide your employees with the convenience of accessing their work information from anywhere.

For information on optimizing your web browser for Google Apps security, check out these white papers:

Ten Steps to Optimize Mozilla Firefox for Google Apps Security
8 Steps to Optimize Microsoft Internet Explorer for Google Apps Security
9 Steps to Optimize Google Chrome for Google Apps Security

We are excited to announce our Backupify for Google Apps Spring Release (even though our local Boston weather refuses to accommodate our theme). This release is blooming with updates across all plans (Professional, Enterprise and Enterprise +) with increased restore & export functionality, enhanced security and unlimited storage.

This release is timely, as articles about the risks of moving data to the cloud and using BYOD highlight the need for a backup strategy. In addition, Symantec’s report entitled “Avoiding the Hidden Costs of the Cloud”, confirms these risks finding in their survey of 3,000+ companies that over 40% of businesses using SaaS have experienced data loss.

Backupify’s Spring Release focuses on the needs of large organizations, with new features including:

• Full Domain Export allows administrators to download a full copy of their domain data, for a nominal fee. Whether responding to eDiscovery requests or satisfying internal requirements with an on-premise copy, the full domain export is a simple way to have your entire domain exported in a consumable format.

• Configurable Data Retention provides administrators with the ability to set a customized email retention period. This feature allows customers to respond to specific legal retention requirements or internal archiving policies.

• Batch Import of Users gives administrators the flexibility to upload groups of users they want backed up – for example: by Organizational Unit (OU). This feature makes is easy to deploy Backupify for Google Apps across large organizations, and simplifies ongoing user management.

• Restore and Export Folder Hierarchy allows users to keep their organizational structure intact when restoring or exporting an entire account.

• Google Sites Restore gives both end-users and administrators the ability to restore items back to their Google Sites accounts quickly and easily.

• Unlimited Storage on all per-user accounts enables our customers to scale their protection as the data in their Google Apps accounts grow. We also created FreeSpace to help manage Gmail inboxes as they reach google’s strict 25GB storage limit.

• SSAE/SOC2 Type I audit certifies that Backupify adheres to the AICPA Service Organization Control Trust Services Principles, Criteria, and Illustrations for security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. This audit report provides all of our customers the peace of mind that Backupify is always striving for the highest standards in security.

Our Spring Release emphasizes Backupify’s commitment to building the leading Enterprise SaaS backup as measured by security, reliability and functionality. As always, we welcome feedback from our customers to identify what should be in our next release.

Related articles

• New Feature: Restoring Google Sites Data with Backupify
• Google Drive Export & Restore with folders!
• Backupify launches additional cloud-to-cloud backup tools
• Customize Your Google Apps Backup to Match Your Business Needs
• Tackle overloaded Google Apps Gmail accounts with FreeSpace

The Wall Street Journal recently had a similar insight, that “companies are finding that big data doesn’t necessarily translate into easy success”.  They put out a list of 5 mistakes enterprises make with big data and how to avoid them.  They are:

1. Data for Data’s Sake:   where companies try to follow the trend of Big Data without first considering the larger goal and objectives.

2. Talent Gap:   the shortage of employees with data analysis skills

3. Data, Data Everywhere:  the failure to properly organize large sums of data

4. Infighting:  internal disputes over which department or who owns the data

5. Aiming Too High:  the paralysis that results from taking on too large of initiatives

We generally agree that these are mistakes that companies can easily make.  But the Wall Street Journal failed to consider one other very important mistake that companies find out about only after it’s too late.  And that is what we think should be the 6th mistake in the list:  the frequent failure to back up data.

As a backup service for cloud-based apps like Google Apps and Salesforce, we certainly care about the larger topics of data security, data integrity, and securing information.  And with the trend towards Big Data, we’re eager to initiate the conversation about the importance of securing all data (big and small) and backing it up to prevent losing information.

So what do you think?   Should companies beginning Big Data initiatives use their current backup systems to protect their information?  Do you know of any available solutions that can mitigate the risk of data loss?   Let us know in the comments below.

Data Loss is Serious. One out of every three businesses has reported data loss in Google Apps, Salesforce and other SaaS applications.

• Data loss is consistently listed as a top cloud security threat by organizations like the Cloud Security Alliance
• 60% of businesses that suffer serious data loss are out of business in 6 months
• 4 out of the top 10 causes of data loss can happen to your SaaS data, which the application doesn’t protect you against.

We repeatedly hear the stories – someone accidentally deletes their presentation an hour before they’re scheduled to deliver it, an account was hacked and critical information went missing, an employee thought they were going to be let go so they deleted all of their files. Unfortunately, data loss is a real. The good news is that we have a way to prevent it.

Take Control
From now until April 1^st we are offering a free month of backup to new customers and if you’re not quite sure this is the best way to go, we’ll send you our Plan B kit with some additional creative ideas you can consider for protecting your digital assets. Get started now and back that app up!

1. Data Breaches
2. Data Loss
3. Account or Service Traffic Hijacking
4. Insecure Interfaces & APIs
5. Denial of Service
6. Malicious Insiders
7. Abuse of Cloud Services
8. Insufficient Due Diligence
9. Shared Technology Vulnerabilities

If you don’t want to read the full PDF, Cloudtimes has a summary of the 2013 cloud security report.

Interestingly, the second most severe threat to cloud security is Loss of Data.  And since 2010, it has moved up in the CSA’s rankings from the fifth most severe to the second most severe threat.

This is not surprising considering Symantec’s poll in January where 43% of the 3,200 organizations they surveyed lost data in the cloud and needed to recover it from backups.  That is almost half of companies who benefited or could have benefited from having a backup of their data in the cloud.

Whether its a malicious attacker, an accidental deletion, or a physical catastrophe that causes it, permanent data loss is a risk that every company faces — and it poses some serious implications. Aside from the obvious loss of productivity and the wasted time trying to recreate lost information, businesses should also consider how loss of data can jeopardize the status of a company’s regulatory compliance.

Since the risk of data loss has increased in significance and severity across the board, we’d like to remind you that it does not have to be a risk for your company, and that you can mitigate the risk of data loss with a secure, automated, daily backup of your cloud-based information – with Backupify. Doing business in the cloud can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be so. Learn more about our research on data loss or take a free trial of Backupify now.

Related articles

• 9 top threats to cloud computing security
• The Two (Bad) Reasons Why Users Don’t Back Up Their SaaS Data
• Data Loss in SaaS: The Problem You Didn’t Know You Had
• Evernote Hack Reminds That Cloud Security Is Important As Ever
• SaaS Data Loss: The Problem That Is More Prevalent Than You Think

If buying that special someone cloud-to-cloud backup isn’t the right gift, it’s not the only option available for protecting data. Should you opt for a different Plan B rather than taking advantage of our offer for a free month when you buy, we’ve got your back for that too. We’ve compiled a few ideas to help you build an alternate data protection plan in an easy-to-use kit. When you start a free trial we’ll ship you one and let you decide the best way to protect your data.

Need something for that special someone now?  Send one of our Saint Backup Day eCards to the ones you love.  It’s the perfect way to tell your IT department how much you appreciate them keeping your data safe or letting your Salesforce administrator know how much you love your backup.

So run on over to our Saint Backup Day website to check out all the goodies we have in store for you!

Related articles

• The Two (Bad) Reasons Why Users Don’t Back Up Their SaaS Data
• SaaS Data Loss: The Problem That Is More Prevalent Than You Think
• Challenges of implementing cloud computing
• Backupify’s new developer platform aims to accelerate SaaS adoption
• The Future Of Enterprise IT: 30 Executives Share Their 2013 Predictions

1) “Doesn’t the cloud backup my data?”
Users and organizations typically move from on-premises applications to software-as-a-service apps to get out of the hardware and software management business — including the management of backup systems. In the old on-premise days, the leading cause of data loss was hardware failure. A good, old-fashion hard drive crash was once an IT pro’s greatest fear — accounting for 44 percent of all data losses. Moving to the cloud absolutely ameliorates this concern, as every major cloud provider has multiple redundant hardware systems that make hardware failure almost irrelevant. To lose data, every device replicating your data (and there are many, in many places) would need to fail.

That’s great, but what about the other 56 percent of the data loss equation? User error, a rogue employee (yours or the SaaS provider’s), a skilled hacker, a software glitch or even a natural disaster could still wipe out your SaaS data. Cloud providers are naturally reticent to talk about this possibility. User error accounted for a mere 32 percent of data losses in on-premises systems, but accounts for 63 percent of data loss in Google Apps. As these systems become easier to access, it becomes easier for users to screw them up, too.

Cloud providers can’t protect you from self-inflicted data loss; SaaS applications can’t distinguish between intentional and mistaken commands, or between benevolent and malicious users. Backing up your cloud data is the only way to ensure that your information is safe from both hardware failure and human error.

2) “It’s more trouble than it’s worth!”
Many IT professionals know that independent data backup is a good idea, even in the cloud — they just don’t have the time or the patience to perform backups on a regular basis. As mentioned above, the common misconception that “cloud” means “you don’t need backup” leads even seasoned IT admins to de-prioritize making backup a central feature of their SaaS applications.

Salesforce, for example, offers weekly or monthly exports, but they are more than a little cumbersome. Google has a number of export options through Google Takeout, but none of these one-off, manual solutions matches the purpose-built efficiency of on-premise backup systems. They either require explicit oversight and initiation from the administrator, or they simply aren’t frequent enough to mitigate serious business risk.

Since most users aren’t asking for automated export or backup, these SaaS providers have no reason to concentrate on improving these features. That puts the onus on SaaS administrators to muddle through manual, barebones data backup — which is exactly the sort of work moving to the cloud was supposed to eliminate.

These two reasons are why Backupify exists. We offer independent, automatic, daily backup for Google Apps, Salesforce and virtually any other mature SaaS application. Backupify covers the use cases the cloud’s hardware redundancy doesn’t, and makes backup as simple as you always hoped SaaS could be. Give it a try today.

Related articles

• Backupify’s new developer platform aims to accelerate SaaS adoption
• SaaS Data Loss: The Problem That Is More Prevalent Than You Think
• How Will You Make the Jump to the Cloud? A Review of Value vs. Risk
• Cloud essentials: understanding the basics of cloud computing
• Tablet Users Love Backupify (and the Feeling is Mutual)

The risk vectors described below are perhaps the three most dangerous threats to your SaaS data precisely because so many IT pros aren’t prepared for them.

3. Zombie Accounts

Zombie accounts are those accounts that are no longer in use, but haven’t been suspended, deprovisioned or deleted. When a sales rep leaves, the admin locks the user out of the account but never follows up to actually delete the account. The danger with zombie accounts is that, if they are compromised, no one is watching them. A subverted zombie user could steal, corrupt or delete data well before anyone is the wiser.

Many SaaS admins assume they aren’t sitting on any zombie accounts because SaaS apps usually charge on a per-user basis, so anytime the admin receives a bill, the zombie users would stick out and demand to be deleted — if only to recover the license fee. Not so. Some SaaS apps only bill on an annual basis, rather than monthly or quarterly. SaaS providers offer this billing option to support large organizations because big companies usually budget on an annual basis. As such, you have the deadly combination of a company with a large number of users within which a zombie account can hide, and a billing cycle that could keep a zombie account unnoticed for as long as 11 months at a time. That’s scary.

Zombie Account Defense: Eliminate them before they turn. Delete inactive accounts as soon as they have outlived their usefulness.

2. Rogue Users

User error is always one of the top two causes of data loss for any application, cloud-based or otherwise. This is because software has no way of distinguishing between legitimate and illegitimate commands. One slip of the mouse and a Copy command becomes a Delete command. Simple user mistakes cause between one-third and two-thirds of all data losses. That’s scary enough, but those numbers only describe the damage inflicted by accident.

Now imagine what a rogue user — one who is intentionally trying to cause damage — could do to your cloud data. Authorized users are, by definition, allowed inside your SaaS application’s defensive perimeter. Disgruntled employees can be your worst nightmare, as these users can do every bit as much damage as a compromised zombie account but with the added threat of knowing exactly where to look for — and destroy — valuable data.

Rogue User Defense: Trust no one (more than you have to). Most SaaS applications offer some degree of tiered access privileges. Never grant anyone more access than they need.

1. The Black Swan

A black swan is shorthand for an event that is so unprecedented as to be almost impossible to predict. Tech writer Mat Honan made headlines earlier this year when a weird combination of Amazon and Apple security procedures allowed hackers to wipe out virtually all of his online accounts, as well as purge the local data from his laptop. What made this epic hack so remarkable was that Apple and Amazon’s security procedures both protected their own systems, but it was the combination of data that both providers disclosed that allowed hackers to assume control of all of Honan’s linked cloud accounts. Almost no one could have seen that coming. While Honan’s loss doesn’t fit the classic definition of a black swan event, it matches the general profile of an all but unforeseeable security failure.

Given the complexity of SaaS applications and the relative immaturity of cloud application security standards, it’s highly likely that another such black swan event will occur — one that may well compromise your own SaaS application data. That’s the very image of a security threat you can’t see coming, and nothing could be scarier than that.

Black Swan Defense: Call for backup. An independent backup copy of your SaaS data, kept separate from your production cloud accounts, can allow you to recover from a cloud failure that no built-in security or disaster recovery feature can handle.

Bottom Line

SaaS is new ground for lots of IT professionals, and while cloud-based applications carry some demonstrable security and data integrity advantages (notably in hardware redundancy), the cloud is still new territory for most of us. It requires new procedures and new best practices. With a little preparation and forethought, the cloud can be more versatile and adaptable than on-premise systems, but you have to adapt your security protocols to ensure your cloud benefits aren’t undone by hidden security costs.

Note: This article originally appeared in Wired Insights Innovation, found here.

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• Cloud Computing and the Myth of “No More IT”
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It started with the Dreamforce presentation titled Backed Up Your Data Today?, where a member of the Salesforce team discussed the importance of backing up your Salesforce data. (We couldn’t have timed it better, since we launched Backupify for Salesforce at the conference!)

And then last week Salesforce kindly posted a guide to help customers answer the question Which Data Import/Export Tool Should I Use?

This guide is great for us because, as a backup tool, the question of restore or import comes up frequently. While a future release of Backupify for Salesforce will have a restore component, it is important to note that not all restores or imports are the same and shouldn’t be treated the same. The Salesforce guide does a great job of highlighting that different tools are better suited for different types of data imports.

In fact, a large percentage of the data corruption or deletion that we protect against is caused by flawed data imports where information is mapped incorrectly or fields are overwritten with new data. Therefore, it is vital that, when looking to restore or import data, you take the time to determine what tool is best for you given the size of your import or the logic that might be associated with it.

Here is how Backupify fits into the Salesforce guide:

Backupify keeps a secure second copy of your Salesforce data where user error and third-party applications can’t corrupt or delete it. Salesforce users now have a vast arsenal of tools for returning that backup data to your Salesforce database. That has the makings of a bulletproof backup plan.

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The most common reply to this question, as answered by anyone passing by the Backupify booth this week at Dreamforce, was, “I hope so.” As Marc Benioff stated in his keynote earlier in the week, a key factor of doing business these days is trust. A lot of people we talked to seemed to trust that someone in their organization was taking the time required to manually back their Salesforce data up.

The second most common reply we heard was, “Isn’t Salesforce doing that for me?” A lot of people assume that, since their data is in the cloud, they no longer need to back it up. This is simply not the case. And even Salesforce admits it.

To kick off Dreamforce, Salesforce held a session on how to back up your Salesforce data. Here’s the session description:

“Find yourself asking ‘When’s a good time to Backup Data?’ Right now. Too many changes might be made by too many people to support significant data loss situations. Join us to learn Backup Best Practices, along with the methods you need to keep up with your data backups.”

The presenter opened the session by stating, “you have to back up all SaaS data.”

Of course, he said, Salesforce does have you covered in terms of hardware failure, major disasters, etc. Salesforce is not going to mess with your data — but your USERS may. In the session, Salesforce encouraged customers to back up their data to protect against user error, data corruption by third-party applications, and for audit & compliance reasons. Having your own Salesforce backup is the best, and cheapest, way to protect yourself from the business impact of data loss.

So instead of hoping or wondering if someone is backing up your SaaS data, why not be sure?
Try Backupify for Salesforce: the daily, completely automated, cloud-to-cloud backup of your valuable CRM data.

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I just left for a week’s vacation with my family in Maine. But it’s hard to leave the office behind!  While relaxing on the beach, there are a number of things I have been thinking about back at the office (this blog, for example). One thing I can cross of that list is our nightly Salesforce backups.

Why? Because Backupify is launching a fully automated backup solution for Salesforce next month at Dreamforce (hope to see you there!). Luckily, I have the pre-release version installed in our production instance. This software produces automated backup copies every night and along with several beta customers, I have been testing a pre-launch version. Since we installed Backupify for Salesforce, we no longer need to use Salesforce’s slow manual backup system.

One of the things I enjoy the most about Backupify for Salesforce is that I can go on vacation and not worry about manual backups through Salesforce.

Backupify for Salesforce will be launched this fall. Sign up here to be notified. Learn more about Backupify at Dreamforce. We look forward to seeing you at Booth #38!

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For those of you with a highly developed sense of schadenfreude, there’s a somewhat risqué but amusing website called F My Life, where the F stands for exactly the four letter word you think it does. Here, users submit brief descriptions of the banal injustices they suffer during the progress of modern life, and the audience can vote as to whether the submitter deserved his or her fate, or was simply wronged by a cruel universe.

In many cases, the real victims here aren’t the submitters; it’s their computers. Do a simple search on FMyLife.com for computer and you’ll discover a cavalcade of bizarre and befuddled abuses of computer hardware and software. Below are some of the highlights.

“Today, I guess I accidentally left Facebook open on my work computer while I went to the bathroom, because my boss updated my status to ‘Unemployed.’ FML“

“Today, after being yelled at by our boss because the office computer server has yet another virus, my co-worker and I did a bit of investigating. Apparently, the viruses aren’t coming from client emails as we previously assumed. It seems that the problem is really our boss’s porn addiction. FML“

“Today, the new office IT guy figured the best way to get the virus off my computer was to wipe my entire hard drive. He was kind enough to back my data up and restore everything from the backups. Including the virus. FML“

“Today, my cute co-worker asked if he could use my computer. I told him my password and went to the bathroom. When I came back he said he’d finished. I tried to log in, but my password wouldn’t work. I then noticed a post-it note on the desk saying, ‘Stop stalking me and I’ll change the password back.’ FML“

“Today, I let my friend use my computer to download some music. Now, my computer has 6 viruses and 4 songs, all of which I hate. FML“

“Today, my external hard drive broke. My husband tried to fix it, and the computer told him he needed to format it. Apparently he didn’t know what formatting does, so he did it. I’m a wedding photographer and had a full summer of unfinished wedding photography on there. FML“

“Today, my parents got me a new computer for my birthday. They also took the liberty of throwing out my old computer, with 8 years of photos, videos, music, documents, emails, and bookmarks on it. But that’s okay, I had a backup. They threw that out too. FML“

“Today, I was told that, although I was sick on the last day before break, they would still accept the 24 page essay that I had written. Tonight, as I went to print it out, I found that my dad had ‘cleaned up a bit’ on my computer, including the documents from last semester. I have school tomorrow. FML“

“Today, I let my mother use my computer for school work. Later that day my mom asks me what’s wrong with the computer. I look at it, only seeing a ‘Welcome to Windows XP’ screen. She said that she saw a blue screen and pressed L and C when it asked her to. My mom managed to clear my hard drive. FML“

“Today, my computer stopped working. Me, the technology challenged one, decided to do a system recovery on it hoping that I could make it better. Turns out, system recovery means deleting all the files off the computer including family photos, music and assignments and starting fresh. FML“

From a distance, these technological pratfalls are somewhat funny — until it happens to you. And, make no mistake, virtually none of the “victims” above expected to lose access or lose data. You expect hackers to go after your photos, not your mother. You’re prepared for an intruder to lock you out of an online account, not for your co-worker to hold your data hostage. And, if nothing else, you should now be painfully aware of how willing many users are to simply hand over a logged-in PC, if not a secure password.

For individual users and the IT administrators that support them, this should serve as snarky reminder of the risks you probably aren’t attending to. Hackers aren’t the biggest threat to your data, the real danger is people you share a PC, network or online application with — because they’re already inside the defensive perimeter. They can expose, corrupt or destroy data at any time, either out of malice or ignorance. And, if we’re being honest, many of us can wreak the same havoc on ourselves.

User error is responsible for one-third of all data loss, and 63% of lost data in Google Apps. The best defense against user error is independent, off-site third-party backup. A separate copy of your data is data that user error can’t immediately or accidentally damage or delete.

For external threats to your data, there is security software. As for your coworkers, friends, family and other likely inspirations of FML posts — hope you’ve got a good backup plan.