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Halloween is coming

Well here we are, almost to the end of 2017, I managed to survive the Equifax scandal, did it affect you like it did me? Don’t be too sure it hasn’t. With the world on its ear about being scammed and or hacked, a threat of days past is still in the wild, I am referring to the “Krypto-Wall” virus that takes your PC hostage, and demands a ransom. I can’t tell you how you will get it, but, I can tell you how to help prevent from losing your data. Whether you get it or not, is irrelevant. The goal of this article is to help you understand that your data is more important than anything else you could do to prevent from getting infected.

This past week, I have had to tell several clients that they lost everything. In one case, I was unable to save a years’ worth of data, essentially their entire business. Data that should have been kept off site, and a routine of backing up everything, on a regular basis. I must sound like a broken record, or a record with a big scratch,” back up your data”, “don’t open emails from people you don’t know”, “scan your pc for infections every week”, ‘back up your data”, don’t open emails… tick, tick, tick.

But the reality here is just this. Like the Equifax hack, your data can and will be compromised, it is only a matter of time, if you play the internet game without protection. Like playing football without a helmet. What does protection mean to you? Protection from a hacker? Protection from losing something more like your Social Security Number? How about all your medical records, your pictures, your tax info? The list goes on, and on. And the one to blame? Yourself. Not the PC, because it is an input device, waiting on your input, whether it be a mouse movement, or a keystroke, it is designed to be a fast thinker, so you don’t have to. The PC so far is not “self-aware” and we hope that never happens, think Space Odyssey 2001.  Everything your PC does, is a direct result of what you designed it to do, or at least set it up to do. It will do automatic back-ups, if you set that up. It will scan for infections, if you set a scan time. But relying on it to do something you never set it up to do in the first place? Hind sight does not apply here.

I know it is hard to imagine that anything you do on your pc, anyone would want to steal. Especially if all you do is surf the web, check your email, and play some internet games. I ask you this, would you let the entire county watch everything you do on the PC? How about the State? Every place you search, every game you play, every email you open? Now the entire world? Suddenly it becomes a threat, and now invasion, or even worse” identity Theft. All because you let the county, State, and the world look at everything you do on the pc without your permission. Now they take all that info, and steal it away, you can’t ever get it back. Gone. Are they at fault? To some extent, but most of the blame is on you. You gave the county permission, by not having a firewall, The State got in because you didn’t have an Anti-Virus, and the world, because you never backed up any of the data you created.

Halloween is coming, do you check your child’s candy? Because people are not all good, some have nefarious intensions. Do you let them play sports without protection? Things happen in real life. Have you backed up your QuickBooks, Quicken, Word Documents, Spreadsheets, Pictures, emails, contacts, Favorites, Tax Records, Employee Records, W-2 Forms, Inventory, Invoices, Passwords, and everything else you don’t want the world to steal from you today? Because I sometimes am not able to get all that back for you, so it would be nice if you had it before “they” get it.

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