Criminals often steal your personal data as leverage for something else – often to get money out of you. As well as making sure our personal data is protected by using strong passwords, applying updates etc, we should also have a contingency should the worst happen.
Ransomware is a common technique that criminals use to extort money. This involves criminals installing malicious software on your computer (often by phishing emails) in order to lock you out of your files and demanding money to release them. By conducting a regular offline backup of your essential data, you have a go-to contingency if this does happen.
This can be to a cloud storage provider such as Google Drive or Microsoft Dropbox or an encrypted memory stick (although there are other risks associated with this).
