It’s 10pm. Do you know where your data is?

This week is all about something we ended up calling “traffic protection,” which is really a blanket term for way anonymize, alter, or encrypt your internet traffic. Most people are familiar with these topics as VPNs and those “things hackers use on TV crime dramas.”

TL;DR

• VPN - Virtual Private Networks or “Internet Condoms” encrypt your traffic; can remove physical locality — especially useful for digital nomads

• Tor - A proxy network that obscures where your requests come from (at the cost of connection speed)

• Onion - Think of it as a proxy web browser making your web requests for you

We also talk about backing up your data and what to do when you lose a mobile device (laptop/phone). Plus, we discuss secure backups and being able to remotely wipe the devices.

TL;DR

• Multiple Backups - Have durable backups locally, making sure each byte of data is stored on at least two hard drives (most easily achieved using RAID storage).

• Off-site backups are important; here the cloud is your friend, but there are lots of options.

• Automation is key: for local “live” storage, RAID is easy and effective; Backing up remotely is usually a little more time consuming, but there are tools for that, this also often provides “Point in time” restore options.

• Treat backups as first class citizens, remember to encrypt them as this is a common vector for targeted attacks.

• Being able to remotely delete data is a strong security precaution for lost mobile media (phones/laptops).

• Remember to have strong passwords on your devices as well (turns out 1234 is not a particularly good password, neither is 0000); please use at least 6 digits if not alpha-numerics.

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