This is the first draft of the intro for the Personal Data Protection book. Comments welcome.

Many people think that their computers are valuable. They know that if they lost their computer or if it was stolen, their life would be ruined. But it's not true. Computers are replaceable.

It's the data that's important.

Imagine we were standing by the side of the road and you had your computer in your hands. Now imagine you could take all of the data out of your computer and hold it in your hands. Now I say that if you throw that computer into oncoming traffic, I'll buy you a new one, a better one, the latest model you've been looking at. Most people would chuck that computer in an instant because you know you haven't lost anything. You can plug that data into your shiny new computer and go about your business.

Now imagine that computer is the only place that data lives. Would you still toss it for the shiny, new, fast computer, with no data on it at all? Different reaction now, isn't it? I know I couldn't do it.

If you don't protect the data on your computer right now, you're playing in traffic every day. That huge collection of music, priceless family photos, important tax information; all of this can be wiped away in an instant. It will get lost forever. Hard drives eventually fail, computers eventually stop working, fires happen and that can't be stopped. Computer's can, and will have to be, replaced but the data on those computer's can't be.

Also, what if I handed your computer to a complete stranger? Would you allow that? Laptops are easy to steal and if you are afraid of what would happen if someone got a hold of your laptop, you need to take steps to protect yourself. You may have a password on your log in account, but it's probably not strong enough and, even if it is, won't stop people from reading those files anyway. Most operating systems aren't set up to really protect any of your documents and a good identity thief knows how to get them out.

But the good news is, there are ways to protect your data from loss and theft. It requires a bit of set up and a small amount of money to do it, but it'll be worth it when something comes along that wipes your data out. Most of your data is priceless, but you can protect it for less than five dollars a month. And this book will show you how, step by step.

Our first step is to form a backup strategy. The great thing about digital files is that you can copy them multiple times and they never get "worn out". So the main idea behind a backup strategy is, If you have copies in multiple places, losing one won't matter. If you have a file on three computers and one computer fails, you still have the file.

The first step is to have all the files in your computer also on an external hard drive.

But if you have everything in one physical location and there's a fire, you've still lost everything, so If you have copies in multiple physical location, natural disasters won't matter. Step two is to have what's called offsite backup. This is easy to set up and won't cost an arm and leg either.

But now that you have data all over the place it'll be easier than ever to steal, right? That's why If your data is encrypted, getting it stolen won't matter. There are many ways to encrypt your data -- virtually locking it in a digital safe -- but many aren't very good and can cause a false sense of security. There are a couple easy ways to handle encryption though and it won't require an advanced degree in computer science to understand.

The above strategies combined will take a computer failure or theft from a million dollar loss -- or more if it includes priceless family photos and videos -- to just the loss of a $500 machine.

Your data is priceless, and I hope you find this book just as valuable.

Related posts:

1. Personal Data Protection: New Book Project I've been working on a new book project recently and...
2. Event: Data Backup Talk at Office Space Coworking on Jan. 14th For anyone in the Akron, OH area, I'll be giving...
3. New Blog: Data Privacy and Protection So I've started a new blog devoted the data privacy...

Tags: book, introduction, Security

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 pm by Joe and is filed under General, Security, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.