We have what we call a ‘memory box’ in our room, where we put all of the important documents, pictures, homework assignments from the kids, and other things that we’d like to cherish forever.  With the advent of digital cameras and the digitization of much of the rest of our lives, there is another memory box that we have right in front of us – the computer!  In this post I will explain how I secured all of our memories and important information digitally, to be certain that even if the computers in the house die, the memories and information will live on.

What got me thinking about this was an attempt to reduce clutter by digitizing the few statements that we get by mail.  We have no room for big piles of financial data in our little house – we do have room for it on the computers.  But how do we preserve this information, and keep it available?

File Sharing

I started using a file synchronization service to keep my classwork and other school information synchronized between my laptop and my desktop.  It was really useful, as I would save something on my desktop computer and have it automatically and instantly transmitted to my laptop.  The service I use is called Dropbox, and incidentally if you follow that link and sign up you get a free 2 gigabytes of storage plus some bonus space.

All this program does is run in the background and synchronize files – you don’t have to ‘do’ anything but put the files you want available in all the computers in your Dropbox folder on your computer. I scanned all of the financial statements and put them in the Dropbox, making them available to all of the computers.

Security

While Dropbox makes a great file synchronization tool, the data is only encrypted while it’s being sent to and from the Dropbox servers.  While it sits on their servers, and while it sits on your computer, the files are just open.  This poses an issue, if

• The Dropbox servers get hacked (unlikely but anything is possible)
• One of our computers gets stolen (probably more likely)

To fix this, I installed a program called TrueCrypt on each of the computers.

What this software does is allows you to do is create a virtual hard drive, that ‘points to’ an encrypted file that can be stored anywhere.  This allows us to put anything that has sensitive information on it, such as account numbers on statements, into this secure drive.  The encrypted file is placed within our Dropbox folders, which has the result of sharing the encrypted drive across all of the computers.  You cannot access this information unless you have the appropriate password/key to put in, and the data is stored with the same encryption types that the US Government uses to store their ‘Top Secret’ level data.

One of the neat things about Dropbox is that if you change a file and re-save it, the program is smart enough to only upload the changed portions.  This is important, as our ‘virtual secure drive’ is a gigabyte in size.

Passwords/Logins

Because of the way that the world works now, much of our data is stored on company owned websites.  Our mortgage, for example, is paid through our lenders website.  Our various bank accounts have multiple levels of authentication per account.  We have various email accounts that we keep track of, facebook accounts, and on and on.  How does one keep track of all of these passwords, usernames, authentication phrases, and websites?

My solution is a two-part one, requiring a USB flash drive

and a program called KeePass

KeePass is stored 0n my USB flash drive, which is on the ring with the rest of my keys, and is able to be run on any computer that runs Windows.  It stores the passwords and other sensitive data much in the same way as TrueCrypt, but instead of holding all of the information as files, it specializes in passwords, usernames, websites, and notes about websites.  I keep a copy of this in the Dropbox as well, just in case I lose my keys.  Using this program, along with the appropriate password/key, all of the important websites that lay beyond our control are accessible.  Should I lose my keys, the password info contained will still be secure, since it’s encrypted.

Backups

thecookes.org has 8+ gigabytes of data at the time of this posting, and it’s increasing at a steady rate.  I expect that it will likely explode once we get closer to the arrival of the baby.  All of this information, such as stored emails, pictures, videos, blog posts, and so on are backed up nightly as part of the webhosting service that I run.  However, this is not sufficient for me – I prefer 3 levels of backup.  Should I pass away, it’s important that these pictures, videos and more do not go away with me.  Because of this, I synchronize the files and information on the server with a local computer regularly.  To retrieve the information, all someone would need to do is to start up my desktop and go to the ‘backup’ folder.  None of this needs to be particularly secure – in fact, most of it is available for public viewing on the web.

Our local computers have a number of files, such as media files, not shared in the dropbox that we also backup.  To ensure that we don’t lose anything, we backup our files offsite.  This is important, because if our house burns down or a natural disaster strikes and causes our computers in the house to be damaged or lost, we will still be able to retrieve these files from the internet.  We subscribe to a service named Mozy to ensure that our data is secure.  Should the worst case scenario occur, we could have them ship dvd’s of our data or download our data from the internet. Part of the backed up data is our dropbox folder as well.  Like Dropbox, Mozy has a small free account that you can try out.

The Most Important Part

All of this is great, and I’m sure that most issues that we would have that could cause a loss of data are covered.  But all of this is for naught if, for example, I die and there’s nobody around who knows how to get the information back.

The most important part, then, is a very low tech thing indeed.  A piece of paper, with simple step-by-step instructions on how to access all of this data, starting with the USB drive and KeePass, then the encrypted drive, and so on.  While none of the above is particularly difficult to do, doing it for the first time could potentially be intimidating.  Storing this where one would store a will or living trust would be the best idea.  I haven’t completed this step yet, but I intend to do so very soon.

All of the above can be had for a very low price.  We pay $9.99 monthly for 50 gigabytes of Dropbox usage, and $4.95 monthly for unlimited space on Mozy.  The webhosting is free, since it’s what I use for work as well.  Add a cheap USB flash drive, some free software, and it’s pretty inexpensive peace of mind.