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One of my NAPO colleagues recently shared a true horror story: valuable lessons she has learned as a result of being hacked. Several other NAPO members chimed in with additional information/suggestions to protect one’s identity. The repercussions are frightening for any small business, especially so for those of us who handle critical/confidential information for clients. I’ve copied the information shared by Liz and others into a PDF document that I’d intended to attach here, but don’t see a way to do so. I’m happy to share via email; if you want one, please email me at roxanne@roxanneorganizes.com.
Be careful out there!
This thread might be a good discussion area for AADMM members to share their experiences or information/suggestions as well.
I’ll throw one suggestion out there: I knew a video producer who would purchase an external hard drive for each client’s video. So likewise, rather than keeping client data on the business laptop/computer, purchase a small USB external hard drive or an appropriately-sized USB memory stick for each client and keep their data only on the external hard drive or memory stick. Bonus points given if you put encryption on the drive/stick. Keep drives/stick under physical security (locked firebox?). (NOTE: this addresses only security and not backup)
I used to be a big proponent of external hard drives, but over the years I’ve had them fail one by one. And the info could not be retrieved. Likewise, with memory sticks, the prongs can get damaged and cannot be repaired. I recommend using an external hard drive and also storing the info on the cloud. Tom, I would guess you are doing both too.
And protect passwords like your life depends on it! Use a password manager with a separate folder for each client and protect the manager with a password you never use on the internet.
It’s scary out there!
Yes, my method is to keep an encrypted copy on a memory stick each week, then an encrypted copy on an external hard drive each month (kept in fire box), every 1-2 months an encrypted copy in a cloud storage account.
By the way, SATA drives have a life of about 5 years before you start seeing errors on them. Same applies to external drives or internal hard drives on computers/laptops. I don’t know what the expected life is for solid-state drives (SSD) used commonly these days. They do have a finite number of writes associated with the memory so I know it isn’t forever.
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