In a world that seems to come at you from every angle, do you have the basics down to help you sleep at night? If we consider the lessons learned from 2020, our supply chain was one weak link of many. Some supplies were in short supply for months. The takeaways: think ahead. What items are you likely to have problems with in another slowdown? If you take life-assuring medication, get a 3-month supply. Have more than one bank, so when your primary bank starts to have "issues" you are not left waiting in bureaucratic lines trying to get access to your money.
Obviously I can't solve every problem or point out every flaw in someone's checklist security blanket. What I can do is focus on my IT specialty. As of writing this post, there are 7.8 billion hack attempts per day in the US alone — 284.7 billion per year. These are the ones we know about.
The Business IT Security Checklist
If you run a business, buy a business-class firewall and pay to keep it updated. Pay for antivirus. Pay for — and verify — good backups. Lastly, if your business deserves insurance, pay a small amount more for cyber threat liability coverage. While you're at it, get identity theft protection.
As my friend Oscar likes to say, with all the breaches out now, "living without identity theft protection is like frying bacon naked." You don't know when it's coming, or how bad, but it's going to hurt without the right coverage.
The Summary Checklist
- Business-class firewall, kept updated
- Paid antivirus on every device
- Verified, tested backups
- Cyber threat liability insurance
- Identity theft protection
- 3-month supply of critical medications
- Multiple banking relationships
I gave you an IT checklist and a few other things to consider. What I want to know is — what's on your checklist? What are the must-haves that are on your list that could benefit others? Nobody has all the answers, but collectively we'll do okay.
— Robert