Feds give New Year’s advice: Back it up

Federal regulators want people to resolve to back their data up this New Year’s Day.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday released a new video complete with a jazzy song calling for people to regularly back up their files in case their computer is lost, stolen or hacked.

{mosads}“It’s a New Year’s resolution that can save you time and money in 2015,” Consumer Education Specialist Amy Hebert wrote in a blog post accompanying the video.

“Whether it’s financial files or photos that are important to you, regularly back up anything you’d be upset to lose if your computer crashes — and have a happy new year.”

People should back up their data to a storage server in the cloud or external hard drive at least once a week, the FTC said, to keep their data safe.

The call comes amid new concerns that hackers might be intent on stealing or damaging people’s data, in the wake of the cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

The attack, which the Obama administration has blamed on North Korea as retribution for a comedy about a harebrained assassination attempt on leader Kim Jong Un, is just the latest hack attack to round out 2014, after breaches at eBay, Home Depot, JPMorgan and scores of other companies captured headlines this year.