Most of us have heard or seen references to “the cloud” but I don’t think many people could explain what it is. During the last decade or so I’ve spent a lot of time explaining “the cloud” to friends, relatives and teachers I work with.
The cloud is nothing more than online storage. If you own an iPhone it’s likely that you use it to take photos or record videos. Your photos and videos can be stored locally on your iPhone but it’s a good bet that you have an iCloud account where they’re regularly backed up.
If your iPhone is lost, stolen or damaged your photos and videos are safe “in the cloud.”
There are a lot of different cloud storage services available these days including Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, Amazon Drive, etc. The cost of cloud storage has dropped significantly in recent years, to the point that almost anyone can afford a few dollars a month to backup/store most or all of their important files.
I pay $2.99 a month for 200 GB of storage in my primary personal Google account. That’s less than the price of a Cinnamon Dolce Latte at Starbucks! Right now I’m only using about one third of that 200 GB and I have a lot of personal files. The average, non-techy user might never need more than half of that.
Backing up your important data to the cloud is, in my opinion, absolutely essential to protecting files you can’t afford to lose. In my next post I’m going to delve into my personal experiences with losing important data (and some stories about teachers coming close to losing irreplaceable data) and explain my backup strategy.
Depending on cloud storage isn’t risk free. As I point at the beginning of Cybersecurity Basics: A Short Guide to Staying Safe Online, there is no such thing as perfect security online. When you upload data to the cloud you are depending on your provider to do their best to protect what you’ve entrusted to their system. That’s why it’s important to use a reputable service and understand that there is a chance that you could end up becoming the victim of a data breach.
The video below does a good job of explaining the basics of cloud storage in a way that anyone can understand.
Comments