Backing Up Data

The question:
A local small business with two computers, a laptop, and two home computers finally decided they were tired of losing their data every time the computers got slow, infected, or had a hardware failure thus asked what they should do to prevent losing their data.
 
My thoughts:

My questions to them: How much is your data worth? Second, how much is your time worth?

My data is worth somewhere above $600 million. I have images, over 100 books, lots of emails, and lots of correspondence. It's saved my posterior in a few lawsuits, a few clients' IRS audits, and about every six months when I lose yet another hard drive. No, none of the images contain a blue dress or any current or non-current political figures.

I keep a regular backup to an external 2 TB hard drive, on average once every two weeks. My email with attached documents can be restored from Gmail for 30 days, my books from the publisher, and images from the camera's data cards. When I'm actively creating titles, every save is automatically backed up to a SD card and the main hard drive. Occasionally I rotate the SD card with the one in my cell phone, so I'm never exposed to more than one week of data loss.

Once per month/six months/year, depending on what has happened, I make a DVD or an external HDD backup and hand carry it to an offsite location. This is out of state in a seismically stable area. Flood, hurricane, earthquake, tornado, riots, fires, blackout, surge, spike, brownout, mudslides, "leave your carry-ons and run", or whatever can still happen and I don't care, my data is safe.

My publisher has an automatic backup on each one of his computers and an automatic synch program where he can move between his work and home computer and still be working on the same file. He has a Mac thus the sync program works very well. He has zero tolerance for losing even an hour's worth of work. Further, as his area is subject to frequent thunderstorms, he has a UPS Backup Battery on each machine. The building can lose power and he can finish his thought, save everything, and do a controlled shutdown of the various electronics.

I advised, and the small business adopted, a daily backup program. Once per month they make a backup of the backup, so at most they could lose one month of easily reproduced data. Most of their work is conducted through a Virtual Private Network to a big company that has their own servers, support team, and so on. All the small business would lose is the occasional business letter that they could reproduce from their clients.

However, one of the business' employees is a grandmother. All her cameras are digital. She now keeps a daily backup that rotates and burns to DVD all of her grandchildren pictures and the scanned copies of their artwork. You can not recreate the first smile, the spontaneous wave, the embarrassing picture you'll show at their graduation, Senate confirmation hearing, or the prom pictures.

It is usually faster to start over than it is to attempt to clean up after a virus attack. The viruses I get, I try to capture an infected file to send to the anti-virus companies for them to develop an antidote. Then, I wipe everything and start over.

Now that we have the backups taken care of, it's time for preventative maintenance.

One needs a virus scanner, advertising/spyware scanner, and either a software or hardware firewall.

Again, how much is your data and time worth? If you do online banking, you need all three items. If you just surf the internet for free porn, all three would be nice, but don't expect any sort of data privacy on that computer. If the family shares a computer, you need all three and the backup programs, plus keep an eye on your credit history and the junk mail received.

Virus protection: MacAfee used to be good, now it just slows down the computer, same with Norton's consumer products. I happen to like the Corporate Symantec combined with several other measures. It doesn't slow me down and I don't visit risky websites, click on links or popups, or open every email attachment or email. I know that even with the top-of-the-line virus scanner, infections still happen, thus my backup schedule. Unfortunately, that's no longer the case so it is Trend Micro for me. Norton and Trend Micro have been most responsive when our computers have caught a "new" bug, four times in the past three years. Trend Micro offers a free online scanner, but if you think you're infected, it's too late for the free or online stuff.

Spyware: I use two programs; Ad-Aware and Spybot are the current top-of-the-heap. Both are free for personal use. Spybot runs constantly, until it slows down the computer, then it is turned off. Ad-Aware runs about once per month, when I want it to, not automatically. Even then, there are a few programs such as CoolWebSearch that are a pain to get rid of, so much so that one is usually better off formatting and restoring. One needs two anti-spyware programs as so many junk programs are created every single day; one program can't catch it all.

Firewall: If you are serious about protecting your computer, you need a hardware firewall. The cheap consumer grade stuff is exactly that, cheap. It will not protect against a determined hacker. A firewall from Cisco (not Linksys), possibly built into a router or node, will do just fine. If you want serious protection, you need serious hardware, set up by serious professionals, and maintained.

For the rest of us that don't have pictures of blue dresses with standing politicians, a software firewall is fine. ZoneAlarm is still an industry standard, and, perhaps most importantly, free. It protects against many potential attacks by hiding one's ports. See http://www.grc.com/intro.htm for more information on computer security.

BTW, any wireless network is hackable. For that matter, so are most wired networks. If one is connected to the internet, one is vulnerable. The recipe for Coca-Cola does not reside on a computer that is connected to the internet, if it is computerized at all. All the US gov't needs to do is suspect something and they can tap into your telecommunications systems.

But, there is good news. As pilots, most of us don't have any finances or assets to protect. A hacker would be seriously laughed out of the bank if they tried to open a large line of credit in most of our names. However, your credit history can be negatively affected by purchases at certain establishments, at least for another year or two.

As generic human beings, we are so boring, the tabloids are not interested in our garbage, let alone our emails, up until the point we land an airliner in the Hudson River. So, keep your emails, website, facebook et. all, and other postings professional. Minimize use of L33t or other infantile languages, unless you are a teenager raging against the establishment, whatever that establishment might be, but recognize that those records may be opened to public airing some day. If you've already posted pics of being drunk during a frat party, remove and delete them. If it was on the first day back from Iraq or other war-ravaged territory, thank you for your service, but remove the party pics from the public sites.

So now we have our data backed up and are reasonably safe from hacking, but now you have an old hard drive disk full of drunken frat party pictures, porn, viruses, financial data, and so on, and you need to delete the data before you propose to your intended. How do you delete the data?

Simply hitting delete and them emptying the Recycle Bin doesn't delete the files.
A software "file shredder" doesn't delete the files.
Writing over the hard drive with zeros, several times, does a pretty good job, but some information can still be recovered.
A sledgehammer does a better job, but some data can still be salvaged.

If the information absolutely, positively, has to be destroyed, one needs a deep pit BBQ or the equivalent. Don't cook any food over this fire. If the pit is deep and hot enough, rocks can explode, thus one might not want this in their backyard, near people, or within a stone's explosion radius of something important. The hard drive platters must be melted down. There are companies that will do this, a serious search online should find them. Be careful, though, there are some regulations that require storage of certain data types indefinitely, plus one should follow their lawyer's advice if in receipt of a subpoena.

There you have it, backup, backup again, and backup. Use a virus and spyware scanner. Remember one is not 100% secure and never will be, thus keep your guard up.

The above advice is worth what you paid for it and generic in nature. Consult your lawyer, minister, rabbi, astrologer, friendly computer technician, dark tech, 12 year-old, boss, IT team, CIO, CTO, FSM™, or Magic Eight Ball™ for advice for your specific situation.