It's every IT pro's job to stay on top of the latest technology trends that could help turn a profit or increase employee productivity. Virtualization is so commonplace — Gartner, for example, estimates that Windows servers are nearly 70 percent virtualized — that IT pros might not give it much thought. And that can create problems since virtual data must be protected, starting with the driving force behind virtualization: the hypervisor.

Backing up your data one day a year just won't cut it. Too many things can go wrong — and fast — and once unprotected data is gone, it's likely gone forever. Solutions such as image backup and deduplication are just two ways that IT pros and average Joes can quickly and efficiently ensure their data is backed up and accessible when they need it. Here are a few data recovery and disaster planning tips and tricks from around the web this week:

While we are creating mountains of online data at an extraordinary rate, not much thought is being given to the future of that data. For example, says Nat Maple, senior vice president and general manager at Acronis, consider that by 2032, it's not farfetched to predict that a United States presidential candidate will have a Facebook page that chronicles his entire adolescence. While this raises questions about privacy and the desire to protect potentially embarrassing online broadcasts, it also highlights the amount of insight we can gain in the future from the data we are creating now. Says Maple, "[This] creates an entirely renewed sense of urgency around storing the digital moments of our lives in a place where only we can access them."

Health care is in the headlines this week because of Monday's deadline for uninsured Americans to enroll in Obamacare. But a separate health care law, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), has big implications for how providers store, protect and back up their patients' data.