It’s simple: if you read my blog, that makes you my friend. And friends don’t let friends put themselves in harm’s way.

I keep running into this situation: a friend gloomily tells me  about how he or she had come to grievous harm when their hard disk crashed, or when a virus infected their machine, or when their account got hacked. So I ask: you made a backup, right?!  But no, they hadn’t. They behaved irresponsibly, and they paid the price.

Then I advise them how to take preventive measures so they’ll do better next time, but I beat myself for not having told them before it was too late. So, since you’re my friend, I now urge you to do four things – before it’s too late.

Please take note. And tell your friends too.

First thing you must do: always remember Murphy

Nobody can beat Murphy’s law. After three decades in engineering, I can’t overstress this lesson:

       If anything can go wrong, it will. And at the worst possible time.

Now, I’m a geek, so take my word for it: these computers you use daily have more things that can go wrong than you can even imagine (unless you’re a techie too). And go wrong they will.

They really will. Yes, in your case. Always. No exceptions. Let down your guard for a minute, trust your luck, and… WHAM! Murphy is all over you and your hard work is mincemeat.

  Thing to do #1: Always respect Murphy’s law.

Second thing you must do: back up you data – then back it up again

The number of people who lose data in a seriously disastrous way – as in, losing their entire PhD thesis-in-writing, or losing all their lifetime’s worth of family photos – is astounding. If your data is in only one place (whether online or off), assume that you will lose it, sooner or later.

What you need to do is have a sensible backup routine that ensures your data is backed up so you can recover practically all of it – say, all but the last week’s worth in the worst case – if:

• You accidentally delete an important file.
• Your hard disk burns out.
• Your computer is stolen.
• Any of the above, plus your backup media turns out to be defective.
• Your house burns down with the computer in it and with your backup media in it too.

I’ll stop at that, though it’s better to also protect against apocalyptic city-wide disasters.

What this means is that you need at a minimum to backup at least once a week, have a copy of the backup “off-site” away from your premises, and have two sets of backups. If you work at a company with a serious IT group they’ll take care of this for your work computer, but for your home (or small business) computer you need to see to it yourself – which is not that hard to do, actually. There are cloud backup services that pretty much do this for you in the background for a modest fee, and you can do it yourself if you have the discipline to stick to a weekly schedule and keep a set of backups away from home. Going both routes in parallel is even better.

  Thing to do #2: Define and apply a strict backup strategy for all your data.

Third thing you must do: protect yourself from malware

There are so many viruses, worms, Trojans and whatnot that you can’t possibly expect a networked computer to avoid contact with any of them. Your only recourse is to have a state of the art Antivirus tool running and updating itself all the time. This is very easy to do. There are excellent antivirus utilities out there, all affordable or even free for personal use.

  Thing to do #3: Install an antivirus utility today. And yes, also on your smartphone!

Fourth thing you must do: act sensibly online

Actually, act sensibly offline too… as in being street wise in dark alleys in a foreign city. But that’s another story; and at least there, few grown ups would accommodate a stranger offering to sell them a bridge. But online, people do the damnedest things; perhaps it’s the false security you feel being at home.

It pains me to have to say this, but I’ve seen people succumb to the stupidest scams, and only after they click to submit their bank account info does it strike them that maybe that Nigerian isn’t really going to deposit all those millions into it. So I’ll say it:

NEVER submit your sensitive data – especially passwords and account details of any kind – to anyone online just because they tell you to. Be suspicious. Be paranoid. THINK.

Also: any offer that sounds too good to be true, is. Any claim, story, or chain letter that looks improbable, is. Do not forward the stuff. Be sensible. THINK.

  Thing to do #4: Be streetwise on the Infobahn. Look left, right, and left again before you cross it!

What now?

Well, I’d love to tell you that if you do these four things, you’ll be forever safe and secure. Of course, that isn’t true. New threats are invented daily. But at least you’ll avoid the most common traps I’ve seen my friends fall into.

And do share this post with people, if you are a friend to them. That’s what friends are for!