I think today’s podcast is the most important one we have recorded.  I didn’t realize until last week that there are many people out there that don’t have the slightest notion of the dangers facing them on the Internet.  These dangers are just the sort of thing I want to cover with this podcast.  So far we have podcasts coming up covering Social Engineering, How you can protect yourself while online, and more editions of our Backup and Restore podcast series.  Your feedback and input would be greatly appreciated.  You can email us at feedback@thehelpdeskpodcast.com or you could leave us a 3 minute voicemail with SpeakPipe located on the right side of our webpage.

Up to this point I am including this podcast and the entire corresponding blog on our website.  I (so far anyway) like this better than an outline of subjects covered in the podcast with links to their websites.  If you have noticed….I have been providing links to everything as it is mentioned in the blog.  Tell me what you think one way or another.  If need be, I can adapt.

Today we celebrate a little.  I finally submitted this podcast to iTunes today.  Submissions to other podcast directories will follow soon, very soon.  So….wow!!  Now I can concentrate on the podcasts and not having to worry about whether I am going to perfect the website today or not.  BTW, our podcast is located at http://thehelpdeskpodcast.com.

And finally, we at IT Solutions-MI, LLC would like to wish everybody a wonderful Holiday season.  I personally have much to be thankful for this year.  There is a special short “end of the year podcast” in the works  that will be published shortly.  I look forward to finishing that.  BTW, Merry Christmas.

Ok, now for our episode:

   There’s a new criminal in town…..and its out to get your money. It’s name is Cryptolocker and it’s a new piece of ransomware.  What is ransomware…..dare I say “The FBI Virus”? Ransomware is a class of malware cuts off your access to your computer, and demands you pay a ransom to the hackers responsible for infecting your machine in order to get your data back.   Sometimes ransomware will encrypt files on your hard drive, and sometimes it might just lock your system and display messages intending to talk you in to paying.

Crpyptolocker will gain access to your computer (typically) through an email. It enters as a Trojan and acts like a computer worm that sits  in an executable file waiting for you to click it.  When you click on the link, the trojan is loaded. The program will then begin to encrypt the personal files on your hard drive. It won’t stop there though, it will attach itself to any and all drives connected to your computer.  It will seek out your hard drive, flashdrives that are plugged in, external hard drives plugged into your computer.  It won’t stop there….it will attach itself to any drive connected to your computer through your network also.  It will then encrypt your data and before you know it……you get a ransom note email (hence the name). The ransom note will tell you that it can decrypt your data for $300. And the worst thing of all…. as near as I can tell, this is an equal opportunity virus. It attacks Macs too.

   According to the Inquirer (of London), Dell Computers has stated that cryptolocker has so far has infected 250,00 computers and stealing nearly a million dollars in Bitcoins (about 600,000 pounds).  Apparently the hackers responsible seem to be targeting American businesses so far.

How does your computer catch it?  Through something called social engineering.  Wikipedia defines Social Engineering as “a psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential information.”  A con game.  The method of delivery for Cryptolocker can be in the form of an attachment to a phishing message such as an email from Xerox trying to deliver a PDF.   Another delivery method might be as an email from what looks like PayPal or a bank urging you to click to a link.  It might look like a PDF but it’s actually an executable file that will launch the virus.

I have received numerous emails similar to that in my inbox.  At the time I could have had no idea that they were associated with Cryptolocker.  All the emails in the world such as that would not amount to anything because there is no way I would ever open such an email.  If we assumed that such an email was opened, Cryptolocker would systematically encrypt all documents that were stored on your local computer, as well as ones that are stored on mapped network drives and mounted removable storage.

True to its name (ransomware) this malware email will give you 72 hours to pay the $300.  After that deadline the key is gone and so is your data.

Once again, as near as I can tell this is an equal opportunity virus because it also attacks Macs.  I’m sure we will be covering this piece of work again and in more detail at a later date.  Consider yourself warned.

I have included the links to my resources for this blog below:

The TechGuy Labs – Beware of the cryptolocker virus

MakeUseOf.com – Cryptolocker is the Nastiest Malware ever, Here’s What You Can Do

ComputerWorld – CryptoLocker – How to Avoid Getting Infected and What to do if You Are, article 9243537

The Inquirer – Cryptolocker ransomware has infected quarter of a million systems since September

Wikipedia – Cryptolocker

Wikipedia – Socia Engineering (security)

Wikipedia – Ransomware (malware)

…let me set the stage

Now that we have an idea why we don’t back up our data, and (hopefully) we have decided to do that, how will we do it?  What will we use? The Oxford Dictionary defines the word backup as this:  help or support, a person or thing that can be called on if necessary; a reserve; an extra copy of data from a computer.

 …so

You Need a Backup Plan

You need to put some thought into this.  Backups don’t just occur.  You will acknowledge the need for security, for a backup plan, for actually backing up your data……but at the end of the day……I know you won’t do it. The way I see it you must deeply feel the need to save your data.  We are human so I guess you won’t really backup your data until you lose it.  Unfortunately, we learn by experience.

1. I saw a tip online that I run into all the time, nobody ever saves their software installation disks.  If you experience failure these are going to make your recovery much easier.
2. You should back up your data as often as you can.  I always tell clients to back it up as often as they feel comfortable with.  The bad thing about that is that if I don’t give you a set frequency to backup, then you probably won’t.  If you are a business, you may need to backup daily.  Or maybe you are okay with a weekly backup.  Make it automatic and out of your control so it will get done.
3. You need to store all of your data in one secure place on your hard drive.  Windows assumes that will be My Documents.  Desktop is not a storage facility!!  I can’t tell you how many times I see tens of files stored on the Desktop.  In case of hard drive failure, Windows will take steps to save your data.  It will assume you store your stuff in a secure place (like My Documents) and it will try to save it.  Anything on your Desktop is gone…immediately.
4. What if?  Store your data in a secure location.  I always suggest your Mother-in-Laws or cloud storage like Google Drive, SkyDrive, Amazon’s Cloud (AWS), Mozy, Box, and on and on and on…
5. This is very important to businesses….test your backup and recovery solution.  All the best laid plans are useless if your recovery gives you gibberish.

This subject within a subject could be an entire podcast.  I know Consultants that do nothing but help businesses come up with a backup and recovery strategy.  Its that important.  A good place to start to research this is here: http://www.techsoup.org/support/articles-and-how-tos/your-organizations-backup-strategy.

What do you need to backup?

If you are a business you know what data you should be backing up.  Heck, sometimes you have compliance issues requiring you to backup certain data and to back it up a certain way.

What you back up will dictate how you back it up.   You back up files and folders, everyday documents, recent documents, application data (applications create and maintain data like contacts, calendars, emails, and these must be backed up daily), Media (photos, music, videos) these are larger files and they may require their own backup strategy, heirlooms, and your system.  Oh yeah, and there is something else too….Windows Operating Systems eventually wear out, slow down and generally become unusable.  Having a recovery disc or a replacement image can be a life saver.

A Shoutout

First of all, I would like to shout out to Leo LaPorte and his The Tech Guy podcast, episode 1022 because during this episode he had a caller ask about backing up his hard drive.  The caller described how he copied data to his backup drive and then deleted the original.  Justifiably so, that sort of set Leo off.

I’ve got to ask here:  Why would you do that?  You have your original data files, you now copy that onto your backup drive…don’t stop now, you are still one step away from safety.  You still need the third backup copy.  Folks, if you have your data and you copy it to the backup drive, and if you then delete the original, where is the advantage??   Where is the backup??  Aren’t you still stuck with only one copy?  How would you define the term backup?  Don’t you still have all your eggs in just one basket??

Three Backup Methods

1)     Now that you have decided to start backing up your data, we can start to discuss what type of media you will be using to back up that data.   The last episode I mentioned you should employ the 3-step backup strategy.

a)      For your everyday files use a flash drive that is always readily available for you.

b)      Your second backup copy should be on a more robust media type than a flash drive.  This copy should be on an optical drive or an external hard drive.

c)       This is your “what if” copy.  It should be stored on an external hard drive, optical media or you can use cloud storage.  Either way, this copy must be offsite.

2)     Also during that episode, Leo talked about a friend of his, Peter Krogh, a photographer, who evangelizes for the 3-2-1 backup rule.  It goes like this:  You keep three copies of something that you really care about.  Those three copies should be on two forms of media. And one of them should be offsite.  Can it be much simpler?  I’m going to have a link to this podcast at thehelpdeskpodcast.com/thdp

3)     Another way of looking at this was explained in “Why backups are important”,  Pluralsight Blog, Ashraf Al-Dabbas, April 19, 2013:  A) a full backup, B) Differential Backup and C) an incremental back.

a)      A full backup is exactly what it sounds like, backing up ALL of your data.  This could take some time because it would be a much larger backup and should only be done once because to do more full backups would be redundant.

b)      A differential backup only would back up that data that has changed since the last full backup.

c)       An incremental backup is different from the differential back up in that you only back up data that has changed THAT DAY.

What to Use to Backup your Data

Once again, this could be a whole show.  In fact it will be a whole show.  We will be discussing storage devices and backup and recovery software.  But before we go out and buy the backup appliances or software, let’s talk about the free stuff included in Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Windows 7 offers something called Backup and Restore.  Just be sure you aren’t backing up to another partition on your hard drive.  I always figure … what’s the point?  Haven’t we already discussed that a true backup is on separate media??  According to the website windows.microsoft.com, Windows 7 offers:

• File Backup-copy data files on a regular schedule
• System image backup-an exact image of your drive
• Previous versions (these are copies of files and folders that Windows has already saved)
• System Restore (restores your hard drive to a previous point in time)

I’m going to leave a link to the website “How-to-Geek and an article entitled ‘How To Use Backup and Restore in Windows 7.  It is an excellent step-by-step “how-to” backup in Windows 7.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/1838/using-backup-and-restore-in-windows-7/

In Windows 8 you have the ability to create a Recovery Drive, or Refresh your OS and applications, or Reset your OS and applications.  In the Control Panel there is a Recovery applet.  You will find Refresh and Reset there.  Refresh will reset the OS and your applications without erasing your data (always backup before performing any tasks like this).  The Reset applet will recycle your hard drive.  It will remove everything on your hard drive in so doing this.  You can  also use either Backup and Restore or File History.  In my opinion Windows 8 has increased the usability of SkyDrive as a backup/restore choice.

…let me set the stage.

It’s fall and school has begun.  There are three types of people:   one type doesn’t worry about data backup and recovery. The second are practitioners to a degree.  They have made one backup and feel they are well protected.  The third follows Best Practices and maintains three versions of their backed up data.  We will talk about the “why” in why some won’t backup their data.  We will also talk about external harddrives, and flashdrives and the cloud.

With the beginning of the new school year you can look forward to a lot of chaos and mayhem.  Why should this year be any different?  Oh, but it is different in one way…..I am getting an ungodly amount of calls from teachers that have lost their data.  Not just the normal thing like, “I didn’t back it up and when you reimaged over the summer you erased my entire career”.  Nope, none of that.  It’s more like “I backed up my data like you guys told me but I seem to have lost it.”

…so

I’m not even going to cover the first obvious problem with that last statement:  “I backed up my data like you guys told me but I seem to have lost it.”  You lost your backup?  All three copies?  Anyway, that will wait until next week.

This week, let’s ask this question.  Why don’t we back up our precious data?  We all know that we need to.  There must be some unconscious reason for this behavior.  I call it the “It Could Never Happen to Me Syndrome”.  So I googled that phrase and what do I find?  That I am not far from the truth.

Normalcy Bias

I found an article at www.wnd.com.   The WND stands for World Net Daily and the article is written by Patrice Lewis dated April 4, 2013.  Ms. Lewis refers to something called “Normalcy Bias”.  I never heard of that so I looked it up in Wikipedia.  There it is defined as a mental state that “causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects.” It’s sometimes called the “It Can’t Happen Here Syndrome”. The assumption is that since a particular disaster has never occurred before, it never will. Any disturbing indications that something bad may happen are dismissed or trivialized.  So now that we have established a possible reason for our behavior let’s get personal.

For more info on Normalcy Bias you can go to the article: http://www.wnd.com/2013/04/the-it-cant-happen-here-syndrome/

So Many Ways to Lose Your Data

Let’s get to the point here.  No matter what you do, no matter how careful you are, equipment fails.  You have 10 years of pictures, family reunion videos, or work data….how can you not protect it? Trouble is there are many ways to lose your data:

• You could oops.  Have you ever accidently erased data previously saved?  Oops.
• Your equipment could just crash.  How many times have I sat down in front of a computer and see the error message:  “You must first format this drive before you use it.”
• Don’t forget all the dangers you face by opening up to the Internet.  A trojan in your email, some sort of virus or worm attached to an executable file (.exe) in your email, a phishing expedition, or how about a hacker?

It’s So Easy to Backup These Days

Hard drives (external or otherwise) have never been cheaper….and they almost always come with backup/restore software attached to them (the external hard drives anyway).  Not long ago a friend called me to inform me that Sam’s Club had a 1 TB (terabyte) external hard drive on sale for around $59 and a 500 GB drive for $49.  I hung up on him and my wife and I went shopping.  At that time I did some online shopping and discovered that MicroCenter was selling a 1 TB drive for $70, Best Buy 500GB for $49.99, Walmart sells a Toshiba 1TB for $69 and/or 32GB Flash drive for just $15.99 or a Centon 16Gb for only $10.29.

What Should You Do? / Best Practices

First of all let’s get this straight.  It’s never enough to back up just once.  One backup is not a backup.  If it’s your only copy then it is an original but as I mentioned before that notion is for next week.  Best Practices states that we should have three backups on three different types of media.  What does that mean?

• You should have your data that you use often readily available to you in case of disaster.  Readily available would mean something that you can refer to quickly, say a flashdrive.
• You have data that you don’t need or use every day but if disaster struck you would need it fairly quickly.  This data you should store on something a little more substantial such as an external hard drive, or a CD, DVD, or BluRay disc.  This isn’t something you will carry around.  Store this at home or in your car or wherever.
• Would be what I call the “what if” backup.  What if your car was broken into and your external hard drive was stolen?  What if your house was broken into?  What if your house burned to the ground?  Yes, that would be a disaster.  Let’s not be confused here, we are talking about disaster prevention. So this third backup should be all your data on an external hard drive or a CD, DVD, or BluRay Disc or it could also be Cloud backup.  And it should be offsite….away from you.