Let me ask you a few questions:

• Do you protect your data at home with passwords, encryption, etc?
• Do you use different passwords for different sites?
• Are you seen as the computer expert in your household?

Yes?

Then let me ask you one more question:

• How would your loved ones get to the important and necessary data if you suddenly die?

I know. That sounds brutal. But allow me to explain.

Last night I read a sometime old online friend’s account of the passing of a friend of hers and how all the accounts were securely locked with high strength passwords and encryption. The blog goes on to record their attempts at getting the data back and various strategies they employed to access the data.

Then just today I discovered that a school friend of mine passed away last September.

Both of those things set me to thinking how my family would cope if …? Fortunately I have a plan in place. Anyway, re-ask yourself my first set of questions. Now ask yourself, how would your family get to the data they need to continue living? Could they access online bank accounts? What about email accounts to inform friends and relatives of the news?

Can you see where I’m going with this?

What’s your plan?

Do you have one?

And yes, I know, any answer would go against all ingrained security advice I and many other professionals would give.

For my part, as hinted, I do have a plan. On my home PC I do use security. I have encryption and layers of passwords protecting various documents, etc which all control access to all of our financial data, policies, insurances, etc, etc …

Would my wife cope with being able to access that data without help? Would she access it even with help? The short answer is I doubt it very much because the standard passwords I utilise would require 100,00 machines and > 3½ Billion hours to crack according to the estimator over at Mandylion. By which time it is likely that the information is virtually useless to my wife.

So what do I do? I have a document I’ve created that details how to get to various accounts. Where and how the passwords are stored. Where and what passwords for what account and so on. This document is then securely located (should I be ultra paranoid and lodge it with my bank?) and a note within my will indicates where it is.

This, I trust, would allow my wife to gain access to anything she needed too. The document also allows me to detail other relevant items such as possible insurances she might be entitled to and so on.

So what about you… what’s your plan to allow your loved ones access to your data?