The typical computer user stores hundreds of thousands of words and other pieces of information in her computer. I’ll bet that this is true for you, too. If you were to lose your computer right now, how would your life be affected. For me, I’d be caught in a tight pinch...all customer purchase histories and billings, appointment calendars, contracts, as well as thousands of memos, reports, and financial ledgers are stored on my computer system.

I’ve thought about the value of this information, and if I were to lose it, I’d easily lose thousands of hours of work. And this is information that is critical to my business. I would literally have to invest months of full-time work to recreate the files before the business could resume its current production level. How much productivity and earnings would you sacrifice if you were to lose your computer data?

The most common method of preventing loss of computer files is to duplicate the files through backup procedures. For occasional home computer use, diskette backups using the MS-DOS program “MSBACKUP” or the commercial program “FastBack” are popular. For businesses, since the amount of data is larger, tape drives are commonly used. Whichever method you choose, be sure to verify your backups. Select the option in the backup software to compare the backup copy with the original to ensure an accurate copy was made.

And by all means, make sure that all of your files are backed up. If you choose to backup selected files, to speed up the daily process, be sure that you have diskette, CD-ROM, or tape copies of your software programs. If your hard drive fails or if you are hit by a file-damaging virus, no file is sacrosanct. Hardware failures and viruses can damage any file - program file or data file.

Be sure that you backup often. Daily is not too often! I make sure that all of my company’s computer information is backed to tape every evening. The next morning, the tape is immediately removed from the site to prevent lose by fire.

But aside from the duplication process, another element of data security is privacy. How well do you prevent unauthorized access to your information? Most business people, mistakenly think that their information is private because it’s on “their” computer. Well, it’s true that information on your computer’s hard disk is private as long as you’re sitting at your computer. But, how often do you leave your computer? You must go for coffee or lunch. I’ll bet you even occasionally go home at night. While you’re gone, who used your computer?

If you store your data files on a network, make sure that access is restricted by a password. Change your password at least every month, and select a cryptic password. Don’t use your name or family members’ names as passwords. Try a combination of letters and numbers - these make a password hard to guess. If you’re afraid of forgetting a cryptic password, create an acronym by using the first letters of the words in a sentence that you will remember. This can also make a secure password.

If you’re not on a network, check your computer owner’s manual to see if your system has the option of requiring a password before it will boot itself. Or, use one of the popular screen saver programs like “After Dark” that have a password option. The combination of system and screen saver passwords make a good combination. To get past the screen saver password, your noisy neighbor may try to reboot your computer. The power-on password would then catch her, you will see that your system was rebooted, and you’ll know that someone was at your computer.

If you send sensitive files through an email system outside of your company, consider encrypting the file. It’s becoming popular to send files through the Internet, the information superhighway. But your file may stop at hundreds of way points (other computers) before reaching its destination. At any stopping point, the system administrator of that point may open your file. PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is the most popular program for encryption. It’s absolutely free; however, because its encryption is so strong, Federal law prevents its being distributed outside of the United States or Canada. Two other popular encryption programs for Windows are Encrypt and Enigma. Enigma in particular is a good bet because it uses the same encryption standard as one of the Federal government’s toughest codes.

All three of these encryption programs can be found on CompuServe in the NCSAFORUM. The National Computer Security Agency’s forum contains a wealth of information about data security, including encryption programs. You may also find these programs on the MIT FTP servers if you know how to request files from the Internet.

Recently I have met a group of executives, each from different companies that are concerned about information security within their corporations. Each situation is a little unique, so each requires special techniques. But one thing that they all had in common was a failure to adequately backup their computer files.

I rarely visit a company that has a complete backup of yesterday’s data. It’s not because this is an overly expensive or difficult procedure, just the opposite is true. Most companies don’t backup their data because they don’t realize how important it really is.

David Stephen Murphy is President and CEO of Damar Group, Ltd. which presents computer training classes, publishes computer learning guides, and helps organizations do business on the Internet. The website is http://dgl.com, and Mr. Murphy may be reached at dave@dgl.com or 410.567.5366.

updated November 2, 1996
http://dgl.com/tbm/tbm9503.html

Return to DGL homepage
Copyright © 1996, Damar Group, Ltd., All Rights Reserved