Case 1
A Bank Field Examiner closed the lid for 3 days without backing up and the drive got corrupted and crushed the work in the file.
Case 2
Bank had a bad batch of computers with a hard drive failure rate of about 30% in the first year.
Case 3
Field Examiner got hit with a computer virus that wiped the hard drive and it could not be rebooted.
Case 4
Field Examiner had their car broken into while at dinner and the laptop was stolen.
Case 5
Something like this happens to you. Are you prepared to get the data back?
Too Busy for Common Sense…
Real Estate has the Realtor adage Location, Location, Location but of course you might not want to live in a shack. Backups are the broken record voice of “You should do it several times a day… Backup, Backup, Backup…” being met by your mental resistance of “Shut up IT Geek, I’m too busy to do that!”
Of course you might not want to explain losing a week of work to your boss or the Borrower with the excuse that you were too busy.
The Value of Data:
The value of data is DIRECTLY proportional to the time and expenses spent gathering it and working with it.
Imagine that you bill $1.00 per minute or $60.00 per hour. A lot of the time you bill for is at much higher rates than that. Suppose you lose 3 days of work from not having backups. That’s:
$1.00 × 60 minutes × 8 hours × 3 days = $1,440.00 of lost value.
Add two more nights at a hotel, plus food, plus a rental car for the extra three days and you just added another $500.00 to the bill bringing us to $1,940.00. Call that $2,000.00 — we all like round numbers.
Try to explain this loss of time and increased expense to the Borrower or your boss. You might look like a zero yourself. What if the loss of data was a whole week or two weeks? You’re thinking “OMG, Noooooooooooooooo!” but you’re also thinking, not me.
What Goes Wrong?
You will never be able to convince me that people wake up in the morning and declare “I’m going to fail today!” That is not human nature.
More likely and unpredictable worst-case scenarios include:
- Dropping the laptop
- Users pulling network cables or USB backup drives while files are saving
- Hard drive failures
- Loose batteries killing power for a fraction of a second
- Shutdowns during saves
- Car break-ins or theft
- Spilled coffee
- Hotel room robbery
You can guess that over time things will go wrong and attempt to be prepared to deal with it. Failure is part of life — it is how you deal with it that matters.
ALWAYS Backup When…
You need good habits and it must go beyond closing the lid on the computer because hibernate works so well for you most of the time.
ALWAYS backup:
- When going to lunch
- When leaving work
- Before traveling
But Is It a Backup?
We need a definition of what a backup is to get this right:
A Backup is a copy of the original files and folders to both a device that is not part of the computer that created it AND is physically separated from it.
Break it down…
Copy… to a device that is not part of the computer that created it — Making a second copy onto the same computer hard drive will not help you when the hard drive crashes, when the computer is stolen, when you spill coffee all over the computer or drop it hard.
AND is physically separated from it — Copying to a USB drive that you put in your laptop bag is not separated from the computer. What if you are mugged? What if the car is broken into or stolen?
Organize and Backup What?
Backup your data as priority #1. Sure you can do a full backup and restore with a backup drive or specific cloud services, but this Blog is not all about a full restore — rather it is about the data that you spent all that time creating.
Some users partition their hard drives so that instead of having just drive C (one partition), they have drive C and D split on the one physical hard drive. Programs go onto drive C and data goes onto drive D — then you backup only your data.
Incremental backups are when you only backup the files that change — ideal for field examiners traveling and only changing a few files during the week.
Backup to What Place?
Glad
you asked. There are lots of solutions:
- USB Drives — Better than nothing, but can be lost or stolen.
- Email — Send files to yourself; requires Internet and manual upload.
- Cloud Drives — Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive; manual or synchronized.
- VPN — Company-owned servers; manual upload.
- Backup Services — Barracuda, Carbonite, iDrive; automated as-you-work backups.
Almost Done… Username and Passwords and Scans
Username
NEVER use ADMIN or ADMINISTRATOR as the username for anything.
Passwords
Upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols — and make it LONG. At least 15 characters.
Virus Scanners and Malware Scanners
NEVER disable your scanners and password-protect the settings. Ransomware and other data killers mean you could need those backups even with scanning diligence.
Finally
You
don’t want to be the “Zero,” you want to be the “Hero.”
Backup, Backup, Backup.
March 17, 2017
Joseph Caplan, CPA, Managing and Creative
Director
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