If you
missed part 1 of this article you can read it by going to the web links
provided at the end of this article.
What Is My Data?
Part 1 of
this article dealt with financial insurance records. This article will deal
with Cloud Email.
Cloud Email:
This is an
area where it is quite common for me to see total data loss due to hacking. The
Achilles heels of cloud based emails such as Gmail and Hotmail are:
1.
There is no backup of the email accounts.
2.
Once it has been hacked, the hacker may encrypt the emails and demand a
ransom for their return. There is no way to undo the ransom hack
attack.
3.
By residing on the cloud the email account is subject to hack attacks 24
hours a day 365 days a year from anywhere by anyone.
Action Required:
1. Download any important attachments
to your computer and follow the two copy rule (I’ll outline the two copy rule
later).
2. Save important emails to your local
computer and/or print them.
3. Avoid leaving sensitive data on your
cloud based email. Work on the premise that at some point a hacker will gain
access to it. So once you have secured a copy of the emails then delete the
sensitive emails.
4. If you are using an apple device
make sure that your email and contacts are included in the cloud backup.
Two Copy Rule: This is where you have at least two independent copies of data in
separate or different locations or devices. In a pc example your email would be
backed up to the cloud and a local hard drive or usb.
My personal
recommendation is NOT to include the
cloud in the count so you should have two other backup devices AND the cloud.
My next
article will continue on this topic.
Oliver Reidy is a computer technician and has
been in the industry since 1981.You can contact him via email at help.desk@reidyonline.com or at the telephone numbers listed on
this page. This article, and all previous articles, are available to view
online at http://reidyonline.blogspot.ie/ or www.reidyonline.com/blogspot.htm
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