Evernote Hack Reminds That Cloud Security Is Important As Ever

The topic of cloud security is one that is often dismissed until it is too late. For some reason, people think it won’t happen to them, or that their information isn’t what hackers are after. But reality is that your information is valuable, and protecting it as best as you can is completely worthwhile.

The Evernote hack this past weekend forced 50 million users to reset their passwords and consider the broader significance of securing their online lives. For us, it was a great reminder of how Backupify can help. While a secure second copy of your data is always your best defense against data loss, we like to encourage our friends to take any steps they can to secure their information as much as possible.

Step 1: Creating Secure Passwords

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told that my passwords should be long, made up of unique characters, need to be changed every month, should be different for every single account I have, and that I shouldn’t write them down anywhere. Honestly, how many people can remember all of this? It seems way too complicated and a much bigger hassle than most people are willing to deal with.

But despite these apparent complexities, there are realistic ways to create effective passwords while maintaining the ability to remember them. Many people are using password keepers, such as KeePassX, 1Password, and LastPass to help them organize and store all their passwords, usernames, URL’s, etc. These apps can be very helpful. The best thing that ever happened to my “password portfolio” is the idea of the Acronym Password, where you take a phrase or sentence that is meaningful to you and then make a unique acronym out of it. Think of it as a fun way to combine different languages you know, make up your own language, or remind yourself everyday of the fun songs you learned as a kid.

For instance:

“Patty-cake patty-cake baker’s man, bake me a cake as fast as you can” and “One for the Money, Two for the Show, Three to get Ready, and Four to Go!” can become pretty secure passwords:

PcPcBM*BMaCaFaYC and 14tM24tS32gRa42G

And keep in mind that on most systems, the space key itself is a perfectly acceptable character, so your password could actually be tHat !s cRa3y. With this methodology of creating distinct “passphrases,” you can easily remember long, unique threads of characters, and if you use a different line of a song for each account, you can easily have completely unique passwords for each place you live online.

Step 2: Best Security Practices to Protect Your Cloud-Based Accounts

Aside from passwords, there are many others ways to protect your data on SaaS applications and while connected to public Wi-Fi. We’ve outlined a few of them in the following blog posts:

1. Advanced Guide to Google Apps Security: Beyond the Basics
2. The Guide to Google: The Advanced Security Settings for Gmail
3. 5 Tips to Secure Google Drive
4. Secure Your Google Apps Account

Step 3: Backupify’s Contribution

While all these steps towards security can minimize the chance of something untoward happening, hackers might still get through to your information. And if they do, there’s no way of knowing how they might use it or what they might to do it. While we can’t stop them from using your information, we can help you with the consequences of what they might do to it. In the case that an unwelcomed visitor deletes or corrupts your data, our cloud-based backup service will make sure you always have a second copy of all of your information.

With this in mind, we suggest a balanced, risk-based approach to security – taking all measures possible to defend your information from hackers, but also realizing the risks should be addressed to a level that is appropriate for your business. If something does happen to your data, you don’t want to lose crucial information, but you want the peace of mind knowing you still have it somewhere so your business can continue without major hiccups.

Security is good. Security plus Backupify is better.

Or, more simply: Trust, but Backupify.