Backups

What if you had a time traveling device…Doctor Who’s TARDIS, Hermione’s Time Turner necklace, Doc Brown’s DeLorean, or the classic HG Wells contraption? Then you really wouldn’t have to worry about security, right? If something bad happened, you just go back in time, before it happened, and then avoid it the second time around. Short of maybe death, there would be really nothing from which you couldn’t recover. You would have the wondrous power of the Do-Over!

This is the same principle behind backing up your data. If you keep regular backups of your data, then you can really never lose anything. While backing up your data can’t prevent someone from copying and abusing your data (for example, identity theft), it can at least prevent you from losing your data to a virus or a crashed hard drive or even a natural disaster. Backing up your data is one of the best techniques for mitigating the damage from an attack or random stroke of bad luck. Luckily, in today’s world, it’s pretty easy to do, though it does cost money. Think of it as insurance, and it’s money well spent.

You have two main options: a local external backup hard drive or an online backup service. Let’s look at the local external backup hard drive option first.

As we discussed in the previous chapter, all your data—your files, documents, digital photos, downloaded music, and home movies—lives on your computer’s hard drive. Unlike all the crap in your garage, you can create perfect and free copies of all of this data anytime you want. Keeping a backup copy of this data is as easy as buying an external hard drive, plugging it into your computer, and then telling your computer to use this drive for backup.

Both Windows and Macintosh computers come with software built-in for this purpose. This software is even smart enough to keep multiple backups. It’s not just a single copy of your data—it’s a rolling copy of your data as it changes. The first backup will obviously need to make a copy of every single file, but subsequent backups only need to make copies of the files that have changed. This technique will allow you to get older versions of files, in case you realize that you somehow messed up a file or just want to undo a bunch of changes you made. Having a full backup of your entire hard drive, with multiple versions, is really just like having a time machine (and in fact, Apple cleverly dubbed its backup software Time Machine). You can return your computer to just about any point in time—on a per-file basis, if necessary. You can even completely restore your entire system to a new computer if your current computer bites the dust.

Sounds pretty foolproof, right? The external hard drive option is a good solution for most people. However, there are at least two problems with this option. First, it doesn’t protect you from natural disasters. If your house burns down or floods with water, the hard drive sitting right next to your computer is going to suffer the same fate as the hard drive that’s inside your computer. Second, viruses and malware can mess up an attached external backup drive just as easily as they can mess up the drive inside your computer. However, external drives are still excellent protection against hard drive crashes, accidental file deletion, or any problem that affects only the main computer. They also tend to be the cheapest solution over time because they require only a one-time cost (buying the external hard drive).

Now let’s look at the second option: online backup (also called cloud backup ). This includes services such as Carbonite, iDrive, Backblaze, and many others. This sort of service is slightly easier than the external hard drive option in that you don’t have to buy an external drive. You sign up for the service, you download their application, and you tell it to start backing up your stuff. The cost varies from service to service and even varies over time for a given service because of competition and falling costs of storage. (At the other end of your Internet connection, they have a hard drive with your name on it—so essentially you just paid them to buy the external drive and keep it off-site for you.) Unlike the fixed cost of buying your own external hard drive, these services make money by charging you an ongoing fee to keep your data for you. So over time, this option is going to cost more than the previous option.

Online backups solve the natural disaster problem because the storage is outside your home. It also usually solves the malware problem because there is no direct access to the external backup drive from your computer. But the online backup solution has other drawbacks. First, there’s just the problem of logistics. Let’s do the math. (Don’t worry, I’ll do the math; you just follow along.) Let’s say you have a one terabyte hard drive, which is fairly common. Let’s also assume you have a modest Internet connection that allows you to upload two megabits per second. That means when everything is working perfectly, under ideal conditions, you can upload two megabits of data to your online backup service every second. How long would it take you to copy your entire hard drive to the online backup provider? First, note that your drive is one terabyte, but your upload speed is measured in megabits. If you recall from the previous chapter, there are eight bits in a byte—so one terabyte is eight terabits. If you divide eight terabits (8 trillion bits) by two megabits (2 million bits) per second, you will see that it will take four million seconds... which is more than 46 days! Recall that this assumes ideal conditions, which will never happen for 46 straight days. If you have better broadband service, you can cut that time down quite a bit, but just realize that it may take quite a while for that first backup to complete. And what happens when you need that data back? Luckily, most people’s Internet connections are much faster for downloads than for uploads, but it could still take many days to get all that data back.

So, why would anyone bother with an online backup solution? First, you’re probably not going to upload your entire hard drive to the cloud. For example, you don’t really need to back up your operating system, which takes a lot of space. You probably don’t need to even back up most of your software applications, since you can probably just reinstall them from disk or re-download them from the Internet. You might not even need to back up your music, if you have it all on CD somewhere or you bought it online. This could greatly reduce the amount of data you really need to back up. Most people really only need to back up the files that they simply cannot replace—documents (which are usually very small), personal photos, and maybe home movies. Second, you only need to upload everything one time. It will take a long time, but once it’s done, you only need to upload the changed files and new files. So while it may take a few weeks for that initial backup, it will be much faster after that. Finally, your hard drive is probably not 100 percent full. Our calculations were based on worst case.

The second problem with online backup is the creepy factor. That is, you’re giving all your data to a bunch of complete strangers…those embarrassing spring break pics, the “love letters” from that psycho you dated from Match.com, your tax returns, and potentially even things like your browsing history and e-mails. If you back up your cell phone data to your computer, you could be exposing your text messages, contacts, and location history, too. But wait, surely all your data is encrypted, right? Probably. Sorta. It may be locked up, but who holds the key? Any service worth considering will encrypt your data during transit (from your computer’s drive to their off-site drive), which will prevent someone like your Internet service provider from seeing any of the data as it flies by. And my guess is that most services will tell you that they’re encrypting your data on their hard drives, too. If they do this properly (and that’s a big “if”), this would protect your data from anyone hacking into their system or from a nosy employee. However, if served a warrant¹ from the police or FBI or a National Security Letter from the U.S. government, they would be required by law to decrypt your data and hand it over (and probably also be strictly prohibited from telling you that they did it). And if they’re able to decrypt it for legal reasons, then they can decrypt it for any reason.

So... which option is best? Honestly, if you can afford it, I recommend you do both. They each solve the same problem but in slightly different ways, with various pros and cons. If you do both, you get the best of both and address the shortcomings of each.

However, if cost is a problem, I recommend using an external hard drive. It’s quicker, it’s cheaper over the long run, and it keeps your data in your own control. If you want to go the extra mile to protect against natural disasters or anything that could destroy both your computer and your external hard drive at the same time, then use two external hard drives: swap them once a month and keep one drive off-site somewhere.

If the computer you’re backing up is a laptop, having an external hard drive that is always connected can be a pain. If you don’t mind paying an ongoing fee and want to know that your data will always be safely held off-site, then using an online backup solution is a viable option. The first backup will take some time, but after that, it should perform similarly to a local hard drive. As competition heats up and storage prices fall, these services will become cheaper and add more features. If you want to ensure your privacy, you can find services that will allow you to encrypt your data before you upload it, too—meaning that all they will see is an indecipherable blob of bits. However, that means if you lose the key, your data is effectively gone; even though the online service technically still has your information, neither you nor they can read it. However, I will show you in a later chapter how to solve this problem.

I would like to make one further recommendation. Computers need electricity to run, and if that electricity gets yanked with no notice, it can really cause serious problems for your computer, including corrupting your data. It doesn’t have to be a complete power outage, either—just a flicker or “brown out” can cause your computer to shut down abruptly. For this reason, if you have a desktop computer, I strongly suggest buying an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) . This is basically a big battery that can be used to power your computer if the power to your house goes out. You plug this battery into the wall and then plug your computer into the battery box. When the power goes out, the box will supply power to your computer for a short amount of time—the bigger the battery you buy, the longer it will let your computer run. But all you really need is enough power to give your computer the time to properly shut down. Most of these UPS boxes have a data connection to your computer, as well, and can tell the computer when it should shut down. This means it will work without you being there to monitor it.

Spring Cleaning

It’s time for a spring cleaning of your computer! It’s time to purge the things you don’t need or don’t use. If the software in question was a free download or something you’ve installed from a disk, then you can just reinstall it if you find later that you need it. Also, you have a complete backup of your system (right?), so in the absolute worst case, you can always dial the clock back and get right back to where you were.

Awww, but I don’t wanna clean my computer! Do I hafta?

As we discussed in the previous chapter, one of the most important things you can do to protect yourself is to reduce the number of places where you are exposed (in the security biz, this is referred to as your attack surface ). Every single piece of extra software you have installed—every application, toolbar, utility, plugin, and extension—is just one more place that an attacker can probe for vulnerabilities. All software has bugs. Adding more software adds more bugs, and bad people can exploit those bugs. Therefore, you should take every opportunity to close the gaps, reduce the number of vulnerabilities, and lower the risk of bad guys getting in.

There are actually other good reasons to clean up your system. First, those extra apps take up space on your hard drive. Second, many applications and utilities have components that run in the background, whether you’re actively using them or not. That chews up memory resources, for sure, and potentially processing power and Internet speed. Finally, many of these utilities and extensions are started automatically every time you boot your computer, which can significantly increase the time it takes to start up. Have you felt like your system has been running more slowly than it used to? Do you find it slower to surf the Web? Does your computer take forever to restart? Getting rid of the junk might very well speed things up.

Update Everything

Once you’ve backed up all your stuff and you’ve gotten rid of all the excess stuff, then the last thing you need to do before we proceed is to update the stuff that’s left after the dust settles.

It’s extremely important to keep your software applications and utilities up-to-date, particularly your operating system and Internet applications. New bugs, holes, and other vulnerabilities are found in software all the time, every day… 24/7/365. The bad guys are plentiful and highly motivated, and they don’t honor business hours or national holidays. Mature and responsible software companies are diligently patching these holes and making updates available as soon as they can. While it’s true that any time you change software—even if you’re trying to fix a bug—you may well end up creating some new bug, it’s still best to keep up-to-date.

Both Microsoft and Apple have made keeping your operating system up-to-date easier over the years, even automating the process. If you turn on the right options (and I’ll show you how), your computer will keep itself up-to-date. Apple has even managed to provide a mechanism to keep non-Apple applications up-to-date automatically, as well. Individual software companies have implemented proprietary methods for keeping their software updated—usually popping up a dialog that tells you there’s a newer version of your software and giving you the option of installing it. While sometimes annoying, this is a good thing.

I strongly recommend you enable these automatic update mechanisms. Yes, it’s possible that an updated version of your operating system or cherished software application will remove some feature you love or totally change the look and feel, but from a security standpoint, it’s essential that you stay up-to-date.

If you’re a Mac OS user, I highly recommend updating your operating system to the latest and greatest. Apple stopped charging for these upgrades, so there aren’t many reasons not to upgrade. The main reason you might not want to upgrade is if you’re running a really old but crucial piece of software that is not compatible with the newer OS version (and doesn’t have a free update that makes it compatible). Nevertheless, there are many important security features in the newer OS versions, and if possible, I would upgrade. And that may mean buying a new version of those critical applications or finding a different application that can take its place.

Microsoft charges a pretty penny for major OS updates. Upgrading to Windows 10 will cost you about $120 as of this writing. But unless you have a real reason to stick with whatever version you have now, I strongly recommend that you go ahead and update to Windows 10; it has some really nice security features, and Microsoft appears to be giving away even the major updates for the OS. Windows 7 and 8.1 will stop being supported very soon.

The recommendation to upgrade to the latest OS is purely for security reasons. The most recent OS will almost always have the best security technology. While Apple and Microsoft will also try to patch older versions with security updates, there are quite often key new security techniques built into the OS that are not included in those updates to older versions.

Sadly, there is a privacy trade-off with these upgrades. Part of the reason Apple and Microsoft are giving away the operating system updates is because they’re making money in other ways, including gathering valuable information about you. Nevertheless, this is pretty much unavoidable because there’s nothing stopping them from adding these same “features” to older version of the OS, too, via the regular software update mechanism. So, on balance, it’s best to stay current on the OS version.

Upgrading your operating system is outside the scope of this book. So if you decide to do this and you have any reservations about doing it yourself, you might want to find a tech-savvy friend or relative to help you. Before you upgrade, be sure to set up your backup! See the first section of this chapter’s checklist for instructions.

If you don’t want to turn on automatic updates, then you will need to periodically run through all your software and update it manually. I recommend at least once a month for most applications and weekly for your operating system and crucial applications like your web browser, e-mail program, and any “office suite” software (word processing, spreadsheet, or presentation software).

Summary

Checklist

For this checklist and every checklist in this book, I will assume that you have not read the preceding parts of the chapter that explain why you should do the things listed in the checklist. Nevertheless, I highly recommend you do read the explanation part of the chapter, if you can find the time. For you to know which of these tips will make the most sense for you, you’ll need to understand why they’re important.

Operating System Configuration

For many of the operations in this book, you will need to be able to open the system settings to configure something. To do this, follow these instructions.

Microsoft Windows 7

In Windows 7, the general system settings are in the Control Panel. To access the Control Panel, click the Windows Start menu at the lower left and then click Control Panel, as shown in Figure 3-1.

Microsoft Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 has two locations for system settings: the Control Panel and a new Settings window. The easiest way to open the Control Panel is to right-click the Windows menu icon at the lower left and select Control Panel (Figure 3-2).

You can get to both the Control Panel and the Settings window by moving your mouse to the lower-right corner of the screen to pop open the right-side menu. From here, you can click the gear icon (below left) to bring up Settings or click the Control Panel menu option (below right) to bring up the Control Panel (Figure 3-3).

Microsoft Windows 10

In Windows 10, there are two places to change settings: Control Panel and Settings. To get to Settings, click the Windows icon in the lower left and select Settings (pictured in Figure 3-4).

Once the Settings window is open, you can search to find the Control Panel (Figure 3-5).

Mac OS

Mac configuration is done via System Preferences, which is accessed via the Apple menu in the upper left (Figure 3-6).

Tip 3-5. Turn On Auto-Update for Your OS

Both Microsoft and Apple have mechanisms for automatically updating their operating systems. In more recent versions of their operating systems, both Apple and Microsoft also have methods for updating applications purchased through their official “app” stores. I strongly recommend you turn on all OS updates, at least critical and security updates. Application updates can be handy, too, though the most important apps are not currently within the purview of the App Store. We’ll cover those next.

Tip 3-5a. Microsoft Windows 7

1. 1.

   Open the Control Panel. See the “General” section for help with this.

    
2. 2.
   Open the Auto Update Configuration. Search within the Control Panel window for update. Select “Turn automatic updating on or off” (Figure 3-30).

   

    
3. 3.
   Enable automatic updating. Select the “recommended” option of automatically installing updates (Figure 3-31).

   

    

Tip 3-5b. Microsoft Windows 8.1

1. 1.

   Open the Control Panel. See the “General” section for help with this.

    
2. 2.
   Open the Auto Update Configuration. Search within the Control Panel window for update. Select “Turn automatic updating on or off” (Figure 3-32).

   

    
3. 3.
   Enable automatic updating. If necessary, select the option “Change settings” at the left (Figure 3-33). Select the “recommended” option of automatically installing updates. You can elect to check the other boxes at the bottom, as well (I would).

   

    

Tip 3-5c. Microsoft Windows 10

Windows 10 Home is now automatically set to download and install Windows updates for you. I’m not usually in favor of your operating system taking choices away from you, but in this case, it’s the right move.

You can verify this setting by searching for windows update in Settings and opening the Windows Update Settings panel. It should look something like Figure 3-34.

Similarly, the Microsoft Store also has a setting for automatic updates that should be enabled by default. You can verify this by searching for Microsoft store in Settings and opening the Microsoft Store Settings panel (the little … menu at the upper right). See Figure 3-35.

Tip 3-5d. Mac OS

1. 1.

   Open System Preferences. See the “General” section for help with this.

    
2. 2.
   Open the proper updater preference. Open App Store toward the bottom of the screen (Figure 3-36). You can use the search bar to find it quickly.

   

    
3. 3.
   Enable automatic updates. From this window, check the boxes to automatically check for updates, automatically download them, and automatically install security updates (Figure 3-37). If you would like to also update your apps and your OS, that’s fine, too.

   

    

Tip 3-7. Update Java (If You Really Need It)

Most people, quite frankly, do not need Java (the app…people will kill for the drink). If you don’t already have Java installed, then do not install it.

However, if you do have it installed, you need to keep it up-to-date. To check whether you have Java installed and whether you are up-to-date, you need to find the Java Control Panel.

1. 1.
   Open Java Control Panel. If you cannot find it using the steps here, then you can assume that you don’t have Java installed and you can skip this section.

   • For Mac OS, open System Preferences. See the first checklist item in this chapter for help with this. Find the Java Control Panel. This will be on the bottom row. You can also search for it in the System Preferences window.

   • For Windows, open the Control Panel. See the first checklist item in this chapter for help with this. Find the Java Control Panel. You can use the search feature to find it.

    
2. 2.

   Update Java. Click the Update tab within the Java Control Panel. It should look something like the Figure 3-42. First, make sure that the Check for Updates Automatically button is checked. If you see a button labeled Update Now, go ahead and click it. Follow the instructions to update Java on your system.