So Taylor Swift has had her Instagram account hijacked, with subsequent threats to leak photographs of the singer in the scuddy.
Entirely unfazed, the 25-year-old pop princess tweeted: “Cause the hackers gonna hack, hack, hack, hack, hack. PS any hackers saying they have nudes? Psssh you’d love that wouldn’t you! Have fun photoshopping cause you got NOTHING!”
It’s heartening that Miss Swift can take time out from her Hawaiian holiday to dismiss the security breach, however her temporary plight serves to highlight the vulnerable nature of personal data.
Thankfully, most of us are safe from such celebrity hacking, but that doesn’t mean our data can’t be stolen . . . or simply lost.
Do you see yourself as an IT Protector?
As information technology continues to forge a more prominent role for itself in our homes, pockets and, yes, even our hearts, the need for “homeland security” to protect cherished data grows ever more essential.
While the IT professionals, such as ethical hackers, are engaged in the war against cyber-terrorism, it’s the small battles we wage against everyday mishaps that protect the inhabitants of our own castles: our home computers, tablets and phones.
This is important because these bastions often contain sensitive or professional information about us, our work or other people. Leaving aside the obvious dangers of misplacing details such as bank codes, added vigilance is vital because some data on our devices is irreplaceable.
How would we feel if we accidentally deleted that one-off photo of dearly departed Auntie Jean doing karaoke in her pink jump suit? Fancy having to re-source your entire black book of hot dates, even if we could remember all of their names?
It gets worse! Are the blood, sweat and tears put in to reaching level 725 on Candy Crush not worth laying down your very life for? How on earth would we to prove this super-human feat of eye-thumb co-ordination to our friends?
Thankfully, there are ways to ensure all is not lost, even when we think it is. Secure Cloud storage sites that integrate with our homeware are great ways to store back-up copies of items such as photographs, videos and documents.
Linking in with these will help ease any worries about losing momentous mementoes or important files. Utilising either a main computer or a hard drive to store any important data from mobile devices is a surefire was to back up our on-the-move documents. Can’t decide which method? Do both.
A word of warning, however, about porting to a new device. Before defecting from old faithful to a rival, remember a lot of gizmos will prove incompatible – so make sure you have a back-up copy of all of your information before attempting to cross over to the dark side.
The same goes with operating system upgrades. App data and compatibility can be lost just by updating to the latest OS. The same applies to moving on to the latest must-have phone, so do some research beforehand and be careful.
Of course, for those of a classical persuasion, the preservation of our most important contacts and details are always worth a good, old-fashioned physical copy. If papyrus is in short supply in your area, any old scrap paper and pen will do for recording – you won’t regret having these sheets on standby, if your phone suddenly lets you down.
Above all, let your mantra be: “Back up!” Say after me: “Back up! Back up! Back up!”
You know what information’s important to you and how long it took you to get it. If you can imagine pulling your hair out if you lost that single photo, don’t risk a premature Trump-head: save it!
The truth is, whether we find it easy to admit or not, information technology can and will let us down. Given how unified storage has become, we need to show more respect to IT failure and take responsibility for ourselves.
Homeland security? It’s in our own hands.
Looking for a job in IT? Search the latest jobs on s1jobs.com