Preventive measures: Stolen Laptop
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@Dashrender said:
But getting back to what I was talking about, why would a consumer ever look at a personal server for backups. A local NAS device maybe, or a USB drive attached to their router, etc. Those options are pretty cheap, but a server - something you'd rarely ever see in consumer's home.
Why are we talking about personal servers?
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Because, this:
@gjacobse said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Best option is... don't store data on laptops. Assume that they are vulnerable endpoints. Store data on a server, just access it from laptops.
In a business environment - I completely agree. and this should be done not only for laptops,.. but for all devices. Data is owned by the business.
But in a personal setting,.. not at easy to do since not everyone can afford the setup and running of a private server.
You mentioned working from a server, gjacobse said fine for a business, but not so for a consumer.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I may have missed the point of this thread. I'm not sure what the cost of public versus private servers has to do with it?
For consumers I see no excuse these days for not using free services like Onedrive, Google Drive, Flickr etc etc. All my files are stored in Onedrive and all my photos in Flickr. I don't know why anyone would want to store files only on local storage. Apart from anything, most people now have multiple devices which need access to their files - laptop, tablet, phone etc etc.
Unless you have masses of storage needs (and I reckon 99% of consumers don't), there are loads of places to store your files for free.
In my case, I have the following:
- Dropbox
- Box.net
- Google Drive
- OneDrive
- OneDrive for Business.
So I at least have some options... And if I take @scottalanmiller suggestion and use of Flickr, then I'll have a place to back up my photos to..
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@Dashrender said:
Because, this:
@gjacobse said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Best option is... don't store data on laptops. Assume that they are vulnerable endpoints. Store data on a server, just access it from laptops.
In a business environment - I completely agree. and this should be done not only for laptops,.. but for all devices. Data is owned by the business.
But in a personal setting,.. not at easy to do since not everyone can afford the setup and running of a private server.
You mentioned working from a server, gjacobse said fine for a business, but not so for a consumer.
Yes, but not a personal one.
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NTG's file server is on Office 365. Shared, hosted servers, same as I would expect a consumer to use.
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I have pretty much all my files stored on OneDrive. This scares me slightly, as I'd be screwed if Microsoft "lost" my account for any reason. I keep meaning to setup a system to sync between OneDrive and Google Drive, so that I've got some redundancy if Microsoft or Google decided to screw me over.
It's on my to-do list, along with fixing the leaking outside tap.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I have pretty much all my files stored on OneDrive. This scares me slightly, as I'd be screwed if Microsoft "lost" my account for any reason. I keep meaning to setup a system to sync between OneDrive and Google Drive, so that I've got some redundancy if Microsoft or Google decided to screw me over.
It's on my to-do list, along with fixing the leaking outside tap.
That makes me wonder,.. I know you can tell Dropbox what folder to use. It would be interesting to see if you could tell it to use say your Box.net or Google Drive folder and it would auto sync... with no additional tools, software, scripts or duplicated files....
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That's likely what I'll try first.
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@Dashrender said:
You mentioned working from a server, gjacobse said fine for a business, but not so for a consumer.
I would like to setup and run a server at home... maybe even with AD and all that. But right now - just not practical.
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@gjacobse said:
@Dashrender said:
You mentioned working from a server, gjacobse said fine for a business, but not so for a consumer.
I would like to setup and run a server at home... maybe even with AD and all that. But right now - just not practical.
Do you have an old desktop you can throw some RAM in?
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@gjacobse said:
@Dashrender said:
You mentioned working from a server, gjacobse said fine for a business, but not so for a consumer.
I would like to setup and run a server at home... maybe even with AD and all that. But right now - just not practical.
Why? We've recently had this discussion here on ML. If you are wanting to practice/play with this stuff, get a hosted server from some place like Digital Ocean or Azure, etc. Turn it on when you want to use it, off when you don't, and some of those solutions won't charge you when it's turned off.
Use ZeroTier or Pertino for connection to your workstations and you're golden.
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I'm going to be getting rid of my home network setup. Ditching my POE switch, Server and Solaris SAN. It's not worth the cost anymore. I'm keeping the R5500 though.
I'm just going to use my Consumer unmanaged switch, Ubnt Edgerouter, and cable modem.
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@scottalanmiller said:
NTG's file server is on Office 365. Shared, hosted servers, same as I would expect a consumer to use.
Whether it works or not is another question
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@scottalanmiller and @Dashrender How can you expect a normal end user to be this knowledgeable? You are acting like it's a no brainer that she stores her data in the cloud.
We work and live IT so for us it's second nature, but to assume that somebody that has no technical expertise would understand that is a big stretch.
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I certainly do not assume that at all! I want us to get there.
Side note, watching Madam Secretary the other day - they had a story about the President's son's phone was stolen, and pictures that were on it where being sold to the media. They specifically mentioned that the son didn't have a password on the device because "it was too inconvenient."
Sadly they made so many other comments against IT that jibs about passwords probably won't stick.
I think the media needs to take an active role in putting in these types of messages (about how to be secure, etc) into their shows. Having a tech TV for the masses will never work, but if you have weekly shows where people's stolen devices without passwords causes all kinds of heartache, or broken device without backups causes all kinds of loss, eventually the mindset of the public will pick up on these and start to change.
But there is little to no incentive for tv producers to include this kind of content other than the occasional foot note from the current headlines.
Back on topic. I think that Microsoft/Apple/Google are making good strides, at least in the backup arena. They all offer at least a little bit of online backup storage with the purchase of their devices (or even free). You install a Windows 10 computer, it pretty much brow beats you into setting up a OneDrive account and syncing it. Chromebooks/box do this by default. I've never used an Apple, but I would guess they either are prompting, or will be changing the system to do so soon.
So strides are being made to help users help themselves by the OS companies.
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@IRJ said:
@scottalanmiller and @Dashrender How can you expect a normal end user to be this knowledgeable? You are acting like it's a no brainer that she stores her data in the cloud.
We work and live IT so for us it's second nature, but to assume that somebody that has no technical expertise would understand that is a big stretch.
Expect? No, this thread is about what to do. We can't start "expecting" people to fail and refuse to help them because of it. I don't understand this mentality of "people won't do this, therefore we shouldn't give them good advice or help them figure out how to improve" that I see so often in IT. Partially they don't improve because we coddle them, certainly. We excuse lazy, thoughtless behaviour. But when someone wants to know how to fix their problems, are we saying that we should withhold the answers from them?
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@scottalanmiller said:
But when someone wants to know how to fix their problems, are we saying that we should withhold the answers from them?
I don't think anyone is saying that.
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@IRJ said:
You are acting like it's a no brainer that she stores her data in the cloud.
I think we now have a younger generation that stores everything on Facebook and Instagram. They're more likely to say "what's My Documents?" and assume everything is stored in the cloud than the other way round.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@IRJ said:
You are acting like it's a no brainer that she stores her data in the cloud.
I think we now have a younger generation that stores everything on Facebook and Instagram. They're more likely to say "what's My Documents?" and assume everything is stored in the cloud than the other way round.
We do? Perhaps when it comes to things like photos, but other things - Word files, power point, etc? Where is the young generation saving those things by default?
It's sad really - my wife is a teacher and she's refusing to use, or allow the use of tools like google docs. Her school moved to O365 a year or so ago... so now using the online versions there along with ODfB is more possible, but I know she isn't using it either.
When I suggested to her years ago that she look into using Sheets in google instead of Excel because it was free and available to anyone online, she said no, If they don't have Excel at home, they have to go to the computer lab at school and do it there. It wasn't worth the fight to me, so I dropped it.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@IRJ said:
You are acting like it's a no brainer that she stores her data in the cloud.
I think we now have a younger generation that stores everything on Facebook and Instagram. They're more likely to say "what's My Documents?" and assume everything is stored in the cloud than the other way round.
I would agree with that. My nieces, one of my few views into youth behaviour, are 100% "cloud" and have no storage mechanisms of their own. The idea of local files does not exist to them.
