On 9th January 2024, Kenyan activist Boniface Mwangi posted, on Facebook, a story that apparently someone, let’s call him ‘M,’ had sent to him. To summarise, M’s car had been broken into “right at the entrance gate” of Coptic Hospital in Nairobi. When M spoke to the G4S security guards at the Hospital, he said they “were too casual and said that outside the gate they don’t bother” since the area is not under their watch. It seems that the car was actually parked outside the gate of the Hospital. M lost some items that we will talk about shortly.
Not surprisingly, due to the way the story was narrated, many of the people commenting on the post were dissatisfied with the response (or lack thereof) by G4S and the Hospital. However, a few people said that indeed, outside the hospital premises is not under the care of the Hospital.
M went on to say:
“I lost my bag that had the following;
-Laptop
-3 hard drives with all my work data
-3 flash drives
-Smartwatch
Sports watch etc
My only pain is the data. I can pay whoever stole my goods to just give me my hard drives and keep the electronics.”
Evidently, the data on these drives is of some value to M. It is probably impossible to replace, except maybe through recreating it, if that is possible. This may not be possible, if, for example, the work is footage recorded at an event.
Screenshot from Facebook
There are a few lessons we can learn from this unfortunate incident:
1) Have backup of your valuable data.
A laptop can be replaced and work continues, despite the financial loss. Data may not be as easy to replace. A working backup would mean that only the data generated between the last backup and the present is what can get lost.
2) Keep your backup separate from the original
I do not know if the laptop and the various drives all had different data, or some of it was backup of the others. However, they were all together in M’s car and all of them got stolen. This illustrates the importance of keeping your backup physically separate from the original data. If they are at the same place, some events may result in the loss of both the original data and the backup.
3) Consider using multiple backup copies
Similar to the previous point, it may be good to have multiple backup copies and in different forms. For example, you can back up onto an external hard drive and also onto an online service such as Google Drive or DropBox. You could also back up onto different online services, so that if, for some reason, you cannot get access to one service, you still have the other one.
4) Do not leave your variables unattended
This is a common piece of advice found in various public places and should be part of your information security policy. Keep your valuables on your person or where you can see them. This does not eliminate the possibility of them being taken, but it reduces the likelihood.