Consider the statistics:

Data loss costs U.S. businesses more than $18 billion a year, according to the Pepperdine study.

About 70% of business people have experienced data loss due to accidental deletion, disk or system failure, viruses, fire or some other disaster, according to a survey by Boston-based Carbonite, which provides online backup services to consumers.

Another recent survey by Symantec, a software maker, found that 90% of users store personal information on their computer. However, only 57% back up their data.

The first reaction of employees who lose their data is to try to recover the lost document themselves by using recovery software or either restarting or unplugging their computer - steps that can make later data recovery impossible, according to a 2005 global survey by Minneapolis-based Ontrack Data Recovery.

Safeguarding data can be as easy as backing up information to a CD, DVD or external hard drive or using an online backup service that charges for the protection.

It's also vital to set up a regular backup schedule. Employees who use laptops may be able to retrieve data that the company has backed up, but personal information can still be lost.

The average life expectancy for a hard drive is three to five years, says Michelle Zuzow at ADR American Data Recovery.

6% of all PCs will suffer an episode of data loss in any given year.

"It's not a matter of if, it's when," Data recovery can take three to five days and cost more than $5,000. Most  businesses that have lost critical data  had no backup in place.