BSidesLV Preview: Planning For The Worst, and Watch Out For That Bus!
Bad circumstances happen to us and our technology. Fire, flood, sickness, and death can surprise us, our families, and our technology. While we may not be able to control all aspects of life, we can be prepared. At any time, you might metaphorically get hit by a bus.
While I felt that I had reasonable protections to recover my digital life in case of a technical or personal disaster, I was worried that my wife, without documentation, would be unable to traverse my backups, encrypted file vaults, and password manager. With my wife in mind, I created my own personal disaster recovery plan to document my digital life and even tested the plan for good measure.
It failed.
Even by following best practices, an oversight caused several of my security controls to conflict in the case of a complete disaster, locking me out of my own digital life as if my backups did not exist. Fortunately, this was just a test, but I was a single disaster or hard drive failure away from complete data loss.
Companies have been learning that disaster recovery is hard to get right. Recently, ransomware on the City of Atlanta’s network caused years of police dash camera footage to be lost, thereby impacting prosecutions. Hospitals hit by ransomware have also learned the gaps in their plans when patient data is lost or difficult to recover. Ransomware, or another disaster, affect companies and individuals alike and test the quality of their preparations.
It is no longer good enough to do basic backups – to truly be protected, you need to consider multiple aspects of your digital life, plan for how failure can occur, and test your plan to make sure it works.
Your plan should include your passwords, computers, financials, accounts, and automated backups. All backups, (Read more...)
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The State of Security authored by Tripwire Guest Authors. Read the original post at: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/security-awareness/events/bsideslv-preview-planning-for-the-worst-and-watch-out-for-that-bus/