Theft: 9 Ways to Protect Yourself From Losing Your Data

Do you rely on your computer for business?

Is your computer and data secure?

To learn more about ways to protect yourself and your business, this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast gives you insight into the subject.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, you'll learn different ways to protect your data and make sure your business is back up and running very quickly if you were ever to lose it.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Computer Security
Why secure your computer?

There are two main reasons to secure your computer.

Peace of mind. If your hard drive was to crash or you had your computer stolen, you need to know that it doesn't spell the end of your business. It allows you to sleep at night. Theft and a hard drive crash are almost the same outcomes. Peace of mind is a big deal.
Business continuity. You don't want the loss of your computer to be the end to their business. This is why it's essential to implement security measures. The good news about a lot of this stuff is, it's set and forget. It only takes a small amount of your time, and in certain cases some financial investment, to know that you will be able to continue to operate no matter what happens to your computer.

Recently I received a phone call from my office informing me that my two iMacs had been stolen.

When the police arrived we were informed that another office within the same building had also been targeted.

The alarm system was set, it hadn't been disarmed and even the motion sensors hadn't been triggered. They broke through the office window, taking the computers with them.

You'll hear the reason why my office was vulnerable.

In total I lost about a day and a half of my time and you'll discover how I got back online within 5 hours.

I thought I would share my story with you and hopefully you'll be able to take some notes from it.

Here are 9 tips to protect yourself from losing your data.
#1: Set-up a remote backup
I highly recommend that you have a remote back-up plan in place. I use CrashPlan and for approximately $60 a year have unlimited back-up capabilities.

Listen to the show to hear how CrashPlan works and the different account levels they offer.
#2: Back-up to an external hard drive
You have to make sure that your hard drive is external from your computer. If you put yourself in the minds of the thief, they want to make a quick buck. They don't really care about your hard drive, just your computer.

An external hard drive is critical. In my case they left the hard drive behind and I was able to plug it into my new computer. It was the key to everything.

For the iMac they have got a really cool thing called Time Machine.

Make sure you store your external hard drive somewhere out of sight. Remember the thieves unplug all the cables and just take the computer.

Listen to the show to hear how Time Machine works similar to CrashPlan, and how it can get you back up and running very quickly.
#3: Secure your browser passwords
You should make sure you have a password to log onto your computer. A password can be a deterrent, although when someone does steal your computer, they are likely to reformat the hard drive, rather than try to figure out the password.

Make sure you also password protect your web browser. This is really important because we access our banking accounts, merchant systems, blogging tools, email etc from within a web browser.

Everything seems to live out in the cloud these days.