Whether you’re a techie or not, the idea of losing all your important data is nightmarish, especially because it sometimes happens due to no fault of our own. For example, search giant Yahoo! exposed the details of 3.5bn users to hackers during the 2010s, in two separate events that highlighted the criminal potential of spearphishing. This is a type of attack that involves impersonating a company higher-up and asking them for account details.
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Cybercrime is big business and the number of incidents continues to rise year-on-year. Back in 2020, Cybercrime Magazine estimated that the cost of data theft, phishing, and other online scams would fleece the US public of $10.5tn within the next five years. That’s an income that would effectively make the criminal underworld the third-largest economy on earth, behind only the United States and China.
Fortunately, compared to company-held data like addresses and usernames, our own personal files do enjoy a modicum of security, simply because dog pictures and half-written novels aren’t as valuable to villains as bank details. Still, they are far from invulnerable. Experts recommend that anybody with files worth protecting make between daily and monthly back-ups to prevent loss.
There’s more to each person than their digital trinkets though. For reasons that range from speedy identification in emergencies to claiming on insurance policies, most people should consider backing-up important documents too. In an infographic about tech survival kits, the software company ExpressVPN goes into detail about the kind of paperwork you should consider committing to a flash drive.
Digital Library
This list includes a scan of a passport (add other relevant travel documents, if you’re going abroad), birth certificates, licenses, deeds, and insurance policies. ExpressVPN’s image talks broadly about the tools required to avoid an unexpected disaster but the advice is applicable even for everyday scenarios. How many times have you misplaced a document that you need to email quickly, for instance?
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In the US, other documents that you might require in a digital format are a copy of your medical history and IDs, and a marriage certificate. A scan of your social security card may also be helpful, although the Social Security Administration recommends care when handling this. This kind of digital library should usually be kept with other emergency packs, such as a first-aid kit or “bug out” kit, for when getting out of Dodge is imperative. In these cases, flash drives do have limited uses without a computer so it can be prudent to keep photocopies in a go-bag too.
An important point to remember is that a USB drive containing all your documents should be kept in cold storage. This doesn’t mean that it needs to be in the refrigerator. Cold storage is a term from cryptocurrency circles that refers to a state where something cannot be interacted with. So, keep your flash drive unplugged and safe from influences like magnetism, in other words. At the very least, Investopedia insists that it shouldn’t be connected to a device with internet capabilities.
In summary, maintaining a virtual filing cabinet of paperwork might seem like a chore worthy of a workplace but the peace of mind it provides in an emergency should be more than enough of a reason to get started.