12. Online Storage

Storing your data online is becoming an increasingly popular method of data storage.

You pay a monthly fee to an online data storage company and in exchange you are given a certain amount of storage space where you can upload your documents and files. If you have a lot of files and fill up your allocated space, you can simply purchase additional online storage.

Storing data online is secure. You are given a user name and password so that only you or people you authorise can access your files. You can also add extra security by providing users with a password token which generates a password that can only be used once before it expires.

Why do people want to store data online? Here are some reasons:

• It provides an additional way to automatically back up data - a program can be run in the background that uploads a copy of any new file either as it is saved to disk or at a certain time of day.
• It provides peace of mind. Even if you make backups at home or in the office, were there to be a fire or theft, you could lose your original data and also your backups. Having a copy of your data stored online means that you can quickly recover everything.
• You can access your files from anywhere in the world so long as you have an internet connection
• You can share files with other people if you are prepared to give them access to your account

Extra thought

Although this mini-web is about storage, a natural extension of this idea is why not have your companies' applications stored online as well? For example e-mail system and word-processing? This is the idea behind 'cloud computing'.