Google Docs is the most popular web application to create and store documents online today. Since your documents are stored on Google’s cloud servers, your data is mostly protected from the dangers of hard disk failure, sudden power outages or surges and natural disasters that happen in your area. For that reason, most users feel confident about the security of their files.

However, studies show that this is not the case. According to a report from the IT Compliance Group, up to 20% of organizations experience 22 or more cases of sensitive data loss a year. This includes customer, employee and IT security data being lost or stolen. Half of these cases could have been avoided if not for the leading cause of data loss – human error. In 1990, noted organizational theorist and sociologist Charles B. Perrow noted in his book “Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies” that operators and the personnel handling data are the blamed for disasters and data loss 60-80% of the time.

Whether it’s deliberate or accidental, human error causes huge problems for small businesses and large enterprises alike because of how easy it is for something wrong to happen. On Google Docs, a team member with access to your files may accidentally delete vital documents without any chance of recovery (meaning even clean up “Trash” folder). This poses a problem of data security that is unpredictable and almost inevitable. Because of this, keeping your Google Docs files backed up is of utmost importance.

By using a service to keep your Google Docs files synchronized (in real-time!) and backed up, you can avoid the headache of lost data. Through www.cloudHQ.net, you can keep your Google Docs, Basecamp projects and Dropbox files backed up automatically so that you’ll always have a way to recover your files, whatever the disaster.

cloudHQ is now in beta testing phase, so sign up today at www.cloudHQ.net for a free trial.