So you close up shop for the night and you’re ready to go home. Of course, you leave all of your doors unlocked because no one’s ever going to steal anything from your TV and computer store while you’re gone – no one would ever do that.

Wait. Is that something you would do, or would you take precautions against anyone who might do that (even though most people wouldn’t)? Of course you lock your doors at night and take the proper security measures to keep your merchandise safe.

So why aren’t you doing the same for your data?

Your company has many assets, and one of the most important ones people think less about on a daily basis is data. After all, it’s not usually physically in front of you and therefore the protection of it isn’t always at the front of your mind. But just like the flat screen TV or computer you’d protect, internal information and e-mails should also be protected and backed up in case of a major technology hiccup.

Even if the files on a computer may not be important, there is other data that could potentially stop your business for awhile – like an employee’s phone book in their phone, for example. Many people only have one phone book and don’t always have all the numbers listed there somewhere else in paper which makes preserving that phone book essential.

Times have changed – there are companies you can trust with your data. There are a lot of easy to use and affordable back up options available to just about everyone for any amount of data that needs to be conserved and protected, too. You can even automatically back up your data once, twice, three times a day – you can store it on site or off site. Some companies even offer the ability to get your network of information back up and running in a matter of hours simply because you chose to protect a valuable asset of your business.

Even if you’re just a small company and don’t want to go with another company to keep your data safe, at least consider using an online server like Dropbox or the new Google Box that’s replacing Google Docs. Anything is better than nothing, so if your computer was to crash, you could locate your data fairly easily on one of the online sources you used to back everything up.