A few weeks ago, we discussed building a Home Emergency Binder, a home inventory, as well as the Family Emergency Communications Plan. Now that things in the world have changed again, and not for the better, today’s a great day to take about the possibility of cyber warfare and our own personal backup strategies. While I don’t wander around in a fog of paranoia and fear, I do like to be prepared (as you can tell from this series). So today I’d like to do a quick rundown on how we can protect our own homes and important files from cyber pirates.
I’m sure many of us have active digital backup plans, including thumb drives, portable hard drives, cloud backups, email servers, etc. But how many of us have all of those things organized? How many of us know exactly what is stored where? Some people are very strict about how they store all of their files, both local and remote. But a recent study (September 2021) found that more than 50% of Americans would rather deep clean their entire house than spend an hour cleaning up their digital files. One of the reasons given is that more than 50% of the respondents are afraid of losing photos, videos, and other memories. Another 49% are afraid of losing their passwords. There were many other reasons as well, but they all came down to one thing–Fear. Fear of losing things that can never be replaced.
Yet, if a cyber attack hit tomorrow, we could lose everything. And with the state of the world, it’s a good idea to get prepared now rather than later. Because later may be too late. In today’s post we’re not talking about organizing files — we’re focusing on saving our files. While you save, it’s always a good idea to delete old files you don’t need. But if time is an issue, focus on saving the data first and then, when you have more time, organize it all.
Here’s a possible (and unfortunately common) scenario. You spend a lot of money for cloud backup and suddenly receive a notice that the service has been penetrated and compromised. Maybe the hackers ransom the data or add in malware with time-delayed payloads. These payloads could contain viruses or worms that automatically download onto your personal desktop or laptop (or other devices) and suddenly you’ve lost everything. (While I know providers fight against these things, malware still gets through these defenses. These services are under constant attack.)
Then you get the notice of the hack and you download things onto an external hard drive or a thumb drive–except it’s too late. The virus is already embedded and even if you buy a new computer, once you attach those external drives the virus will be uploaded and affect the new operating system. Often, when this happens, you’ll end up with a locked screen and a ransomware notice. If you don’t pay, you lose everything. So what do you do, other than print everything out that you’ve ever worked on?
Digital Back-up Plan
- Consider printing out certain things that are vitally important and placing them in your Home Emergency Binder. Here is a list of vital documents that we discussed a few weeks ago. But also check and see if you have any other business or household account information stored online that you would need if you lost all your digital files. Here are a few examples, and I’m sure you can think of more:
- The spreadsheet you’ve set up for the preschool’s silent auction that you’re running.
- The list of parents’ names and numbers on your kids’ sports teams.
- All online banking and investment information. If this changes daily, consider doing a weekly printout every Friday. It doesn’t have to be totally up to date, just recent enough that you can refer to it.
- Print out tax returns and here is the IRS.gov site that lays out exactly how long you need to keep your returns and other tax documents.
- Compile and print a list of all of your passwords. Here is a free site that offers different kinds of password templates, both in document and spreadsheet format, for both home and business. It’s also editable so you can download the templates and make them your own. Once you print it, add it to your Home Emergency Binder.
- If you have any important documents (for me this would include all of my manuscripts), save them in plain text files on a NEW thumb drive that has nothing else on it. If you have large documents, use a different thumb drive for each one. Thumb drives are cheap and you can buy them on Amazon in bulk. It is really hard to hide any malicious code in a .txt file. So it’s always a good idea to back your documents this way.
- If you don’t know how to save a document in a .txt file, here’s a super short video on what to do. (yes, the video is old but it’s straight-forward and things haven’t change that much. Go to minute 2:10 and she walks you through how to save a text file.)
- If you are paranoid about certain documents, like I am about my manuscripts, just print them out and store them in a safe place, like a box or a bin. Fire and waterproof bins are even better.
- For all other types of data, including spreadsheets, photos, videos, etc., you can purchase a NEW external hard drive (or multiple hard drives) and just move all the files (as long as you know they aren’t infected) over. While this isn’t hard work, it does take time and some money. Although, luckily, hard drives and thumb drives have really come down in price over the past few years. It’s a good idea to keep like files together such as all photos on one drive, all financial spreadsheets on another, all tax returns on a third, etc.
- Once you have your external hard drives/thumb drives, you can store them in a fireproof/waterproof safe. Then, go back to your calendar and make a note about which of these drives will need to be updated and how often.
Because our world is so information-based now, and there’s so much political upheaval, it’s never been more important to protect our digital information from cyber thieves and ransomware attacks. Taking a few minutes now could save you lots of grief later on. Hopefully nothing bad will happen to any of us, but with the weirdness of the world right now, it’s always best to be prepared.
