A headline from just a few days ago reads:
“Microsoft’s AI research team mistakenly leaked 38TB of the company’s private data”
38TB?
Go ahead: record over 2 years of continuous HD video. It’s that much!
Or: cram 39,400 filing cabinets full of paper. It’s that much!
Fair to say:
Microsoft wins the prize for “whoops of the week”! 😖
The details why this happened are interesting (well, maybe to geeks like me). But this email would fast become “snore of the week” if I started unpacking it.
Lets just say: the keys were left in the door.
Now…
How does it make you feel when the big players need remedial lock and key training?
And yet, we entrust our own data — personal and business — into the hands of their cloud storage. Emphasis on their.
Sometimes I wonder if we’ve made a massive retrograde step storing everything in the cloud.
Don’t I sound the luddite?
Sure, I use services like Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive.
Yes, I use all 3 for different purposes. And having 4TB of cloud storage on hand can come in pretty handy 🙂
Especially when the need to store 5,000 or so filing cabinets-worth of information arises.
But… I don’t entrust anything only to the cloud.
I’m acutely aware that any company that controls the access to my own data… and that’s EVERY one of them… can lock me out at any time. For any reason. Intentionally or whoopsily.
We’ve seen that happen with the cancellation of people’s online accounts — even bank accounts! — because they held the “wrong” opinion.
Who knows if the next Microsoft-related headline will be:
“Microsoft’s AI research team mistakenly scrambled 38TB of their customers private data — and all backups have failed“
Now, I’m not going to sell you a better solution today…
But I will suggest — if you haven’t yet considered it…
Make sure you have your own copies of every little bit of the important data you need to run your freelance business.
From backups of websites… to your writing, designs, branding materials… anything you need.
Even just using browser extensions to snapshot website pages, means you have a quick way to put them back online elsewhere if needed.
At the very, very least… use the cloud as a backup.
And have everything stored locally on your computer.
Watch out for things like the Google “online only” tickbox. Linked to a handy feature that means you can save space on your local device. (And there’s Dropbox and Onedrive equivalents of this too.)
Your files kinda LOOK like and behave like they’re saved on your computer so it could be all too easy to forget:
It’s just a mirage.
No access to the cloud means the files are effectively gone.
I guess we can stretch this even wider and say:
Even for relatively small players like freelancers…
Having a business continuity plan is great insurance for when the worst happens.
But if you’re a Microsoft…
It’s a shrug. And an “oops”. And a press release saying:
“No customer data was exposed, and no other internal services were put at risk.”
Still…
Doesn’t make for warm fuzzies if you use their services and they can’t keep their own internal data safe!
Ready to build your email list? Go here…
EmailForTheWin.com
Chris Milham