I have been telling myself for years to get myself an external hard drive. I still haven't; not sure why. But it's getting to the point I really should. I have lots of music and family pictures I don't want to lose.
I do use Amazon Cloud for some music and books for my tablet.
I use Microsoft SkyDrive Cloud service to backup my computer. I used to use Google Drive, but it wasn't compatible with my MS Office documents. The clouds the way to go because if your home catches on fire you are still protected and the cloud won't fail on you like an external hardrive can and will.
Well I have a backup drive + I backup off site (I have space on an amazon server). Thats a little much for most people, but I have a lot of client data so its something I kinda have to do.
For the most part, cloud backups are generally secure and thats what most at the consumer level tend to use.