NITDA advises on data backup, wants entries for 2021 innovation challenge

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has called on Nigerians to ensure they back up their data to avoid losses.

NITDA, which joined the rest of the globe to mark World BackUp Day, (March 31), said data backup is the process of keeping a clean second copy of any important digital content to guarantee availability; even when a computer crashes, cell phones or tablets get lost, data becomes corrupted or gets destroyed by a virus.

NITDA, in a statement, signed by its Head, Corporate Affairs and External Relations, Mrs. Hadiza Umar, said that with Nigeria’s drive for a vibrant Digital Economy, which intends to encourage both public and private institutions to promote their services online, there is potential to generate a massive amount of data.

Umar, who said World Backup Day originally began as World Backup Month, informed that the event was initiated by a hard drive company (Maxtor), which was later acquired by Seagate Technology.

According to her, this year’s event is timely because reminders of data protection are needed more than ever due to the sudden global shift to work-from-home.

Further, she said World BackUp Day aims to raise awareness concerning the role of data in our lives and consequently the importance of undertaking regular data backup.

“Making a backup copy of your valuable data can make all the difference when data loss or a compromise occurs. NITDA encourages the public to safely store backup copies of all valuable data from servers, personal electronic devices such as computers, smartphones, and tablets regularly,” she stressed.

As such, Umar said NITDA advises the public to adopt the following  for data backup; first, individuals can back up data daily to an external storage device like Flash Drive, Memory Card, HardDisk Drive (HDD) or Solid State Drive (SSD), or Cloud Storage.

Secondly, people should follow the 3/2/1 backup rule with three copies of your data, two on different media types, and one remote copy (cloud storage).

“Be sure to backup your data regularly and encourage your family, friends, and colleagues to do the same,” she added.

MEANWHILE, as part of the United Nations’ World Creativity and Innovation Day 2021 is organising an Innovation Challenge with the theme “Inspiring Creativity and Innovation in the Nigerian Digital Economy” to harness innovative and impactful solutions for the development of a vibrant digital economy.

The World Creativity and Innovation Day is a global UN day celebrated to raise awareness around the importance of creativity and innovation in problem-solving concerning advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also known as the “global goals”.

The Agency is therefore calling on all Nigerians with innovative and impactful working solutions to make entries for the Innovation Challenge. Solutions will be evaluated based on job and wealth creation potential, originality, marketability, scalability and inclusiveness. Successful entries will have an opportunity to present their solutions to the Tech Industry Stakeholders.

The event is scheduled as follows: Submission of entries via http://bit.ly/NITDA21WCID.The portal will be opened from April 12 till 17. Entries will be evaluated and assessed by April 19, and successful ones will be required to do a five-minute live pitch on Wednesday, April 21.