A few weeks ago, right before Christmas, someone broke into my friend Mike's office on Waialae Avenue and made off with his laptop.

Fortunately he had backed up most of his work and the insurance company paid for a new computer.

It was a traumatic experience for sure, but it could have been a lot worse.

What I'm going to do in this column is something I do at the beginning of every year—offer my readers a New Year's resolution to be prepared for an IT disaster.

So here we go ...

  » Get a good Internet security program.

My choice is Trend Micro's Internet Security Pro ($69), which is excellent for a small business or home office. It's easy to use and doesn't interfere with other programs on my system the way Symantec's Norton used to do. It's a complete package with anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-identity theft, child-protection and security software for my smart phone. Security Pro even has a way to lock your files in case of theft.

» Get an external drive to keep your data safe on your PC.

Used to be external drives were big and hefty—the size of an old school textbook, and you needed an electrical plug to keep them running. Nowadays, storage capacity is huge and the physical size has shrunk to virtually nothing. I picked a 320 gig FreeAgent Go external drive from Seagate about the size of my Apple iPhone for $100. You don't need a CD to install it and it's connected via a USB port, so it's much greener than the old system. When the computer shuts off, it goes off, too—no waste of electricity.

» Consider a network storage server:

Storage has gotten so cheap that you can get a terabyte (1 TB) system for as little as $200 to back up your entire network.

I looked at the Maxtor Central Axis, a network-attached-storage system that provides backup, restoration, and media serving, as well as Web access and sharing.

One issue that I did encounter was that it runs a bit hot. Nonetheless, it is quiet.

What I liked is that you can also stream your media to UPnP AV-compatible (universal plug-and-play audio/visual) networked entertain- ment systems without using a computer. That means you can store music or video and stream to your heart's content.

Another plus, by setting up an account with Seagate Global Access, you can retrieve and store files from Central Axis over the Internet. For sharing files among several family members or colleagues at work, this is the ticket.

» Back up your data online.

As my friend Mike learned, laptops are never safe from theft—even in your office. Mozy is a Utah company that has an unlimited online backup service for just $5 a month.

Essentially, you set it up and forget it. While you're working, the system backs up your files and sends them to a server somewhere outside of Salt Lake City. I've used it for a couple of years with little trouble. If you want to give it a free spin, sign up for MozyHome Free, which gives you 2GB of backup space at no cost.