data encryption to protect data that is stolen or intercepted however its important to remember that passwords can be hacked typically the service provider holds the encryption keys to your data meaning that rogue employees could theoretically access it likewise your data could also potentially be searched and seized by government entitiesthis begs the question trust or dont trust because cloud storage companies live and die by their reputation you can rest assured knowing that they go to great lengths to use the most advanced security techniques and provide the most reliable service possible to help ensure the security of your data should you choose to store or back it up to the cloud keep anything truly sensitive in a private cloud behind a firewallexternal hard drivewith an external hard drive you can manually back up all your data and files yourself onto a physical device that you can access anytime these drives are a reliable way to achieve data redundancy an external hard drive doesnt rely on internet access like cloudbased services and is an easy fix when transferring data to a new device however using external hard drives requires a more handson approach to backing up your data its your responsibility to regularly perform backups yourself and store your hard drive in a safe location while cloud solutions offer huge amounts of storage storage space on hard drives are limited so you may have to purchase more than one device look for an external drive with at least a terabyte of space to accommodate all your data which tends to accumulate quicklyby mcafee