Safe as Houses

Like many people, I take my safety and security at home for granted. When I walk in the door at the end of the day, and sit inside with my family, my home is my safe place. When I leave for the day, locking all the doors, checking our home security alarm is set, and everything is secure, I trust my home will be safe.

Over the summer something happened that made me reassess how I felt about the safety of our home, and our own personal safety. We had an armed robbery next door. Like a scene from a movie men with balaclavas running down the street and swiftly our house looked like a scene from Luther, without Idriss Alba, sadly, although there were some rather nice looking Tactical Response Group guys marching down the street. The police, council and housing association were all very responsive and helpful in making us feel secure and safe again.

It's not just our homes, we have to take great care of our own personal safety too, learning how to take care of our personal information. As a parent a real challenge is teaching my son how much to disclose, when and who to. So much of personal safety is our responsibility and learning to manage that is quite a challenge when you think about it. Most of you reading this will be aware of my own personal history as a child, and teaching Joseph to be safe whilst not scaring him, is such a real challenge for me. I don't want him to lose his sunny personality and his natural openess. Once he starts using services on line, what I have taught him so far hopefully will provide a good base for the challenges that lie ahead.

Like many people I only learnt the importance of data security when I failed to back up the data on my computer and lost a lot of pictures and documents. I am not the best at remembering to back up, and until recently I didn't realise what was out there in terms of data storage. Tesco compare home insurance sent me a Seagate hard drive to try. 

 This device is so easy to use, and provides me with the added security that if my laptop is lost, stolen, or has a nasty accident (a fate which befell my last one – thanks Joseph) my data is secure. I did learn a useful tip recently. On a television show about security a woman had her lap top on her desk near a window. An opportunistic thief stole the lap top. She had three external hard drives next to the lap top and he stole all those too. She was a wedding photographer and lost all her photos she had taken for couples. So ensure that once you have backed up you secure your hard drives somewhere away from your computer.

It's so essential not to leave security to chance. Review your security regularly, home, personal and online too. And if you do have devices like external hard drives, make sure you have a back up schedule and utilise them regularly, don't learn the hard way. 

I was sent a Seagate Hard Drive to try, all opinions my own