This is a community service announcement to EVERYONE out there who isn’t backing up their technology. Why I am going over something as basic as backup? Again? Because I have again been called into assist recover someone’s machine that wouldn’t boot (even though I haven’t worked with hardware for years). Of course, no backups where available and “everything” on the machine was vital!
In most cases it would probably be easier to walk away from these types of jobs but sometimes relationships overwrite logic. Of course the machine in question came with no further information to assist in the troubleshooting process. Which version of Windows did it run? (Vista Home Premium as it turned out), where is the data that needs to recovered? (on the desktop as it turned out) and so on.
What most non IT people fail to realize is that recovering from these situations is not straight forward and can take a lot of time. In this case, I took a backup image of the machine before commencing work. I then had to troubleshoot non booting issues. Then I had to locate and create suitable Windows boot DVDs to allow recovery. Finally I had to repair the problem so the system could boot. I also had to locate the gigabytes and gigabytes of ‘important’ information and copy it onto an external USB disk, just in case the laptop had further problems during its return transit.
All in all I probably spent about 8+ hours in total recovering the laptop and backing up the information. The user was very pleased about get their information back and they have been sternly warned that this is the one and only time they get a free pass on this. Their question to me is ‘how do I backup?’ and you know what I don’t know how best to answer that.
I appreciate that there are myriad of ways to backup but if I am being asked about ‘how to backup’ is there any real chance that a user is going to be able to install and configure something successfully? Probably not. So the best bet is either probably just to copy the desired files to a USB disk (which I suggested here) or install some sort of cloud based backup service. But again here the choice becomes complex for users. Which one? How much does it cost? How can I get my data back? See what I mean?
So yes backup is critical for any digital system but you know what? If you don’t know how to backup yourself then you need to find someone to help. This is not unlike taking your car to a mechanic, unfortunately I don’t think technology has gotten any simpler for most people even when it comes to something as essential as backup.

Troy Hunt has featured on a recent Four Corners episode – In Google We Trust.
http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2013/09/09/3842009.htm
For those that may not know Troy has also done a podcast with me as well as been part of the CIAOPS Virtual Technology Group where he did a presentation on web security that is available on my YouTube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxu5qYCtv1s
This Four Corners episode is a good watch and reveals how widespread tracking is now becoming. From traffic lights and garbage bins to shopping centres, if you carry you mobile phone with you MUST assume you are being tracked constantly.
Whether tracking is a good or a bad thing is up to you. It can certainly provide you with more targeting offerings but the big question is what happens to that data and what would happen if it is abused?
Clearly the biggest consideration is that people need to far more aware of the how they are being tracked and be far more proactive in asking questions about how their data is being used.
Again, a great program and I commend it to everyone.

There is a lot of talk these days about tracking, cookies and so on. You can read a lot of good and lot more bad information about the role that cookies play on your system but rather than go through a whole heap of stuff here I’ll refer you to:

https://www.grc.com/cookies/forensics.htm

which will not only explain to you about all the different forms of cookies but also test your system to let you know where you are potentially expose.

The first step to being is more secure is having an understanding of what being secure actually means. The above site should put you well down that path.

Most people are pretty aware these days of people from foreign countries cold calling you claiming there are issues on your PC and kindly offering to help (for a fee of course). If they are given access to your PC system then things go downhill pretty quick for you from there.

However, even with all the publicity out there about the scams they just keep calling so there must still be people getting scammed. Now what happens if these scammers call a security MVP like Troy Hunt who recently gave a presentation for the CIAOPS Virtual Technology meeting (which you should go and look at after this)?

Watch and enjoy!