1Password.com subscription...what is my DR strategy?
Hi all. I've been reluctantly pulled into the world of cloud-storage of my precious password data. I pored over the security white paper and became more comfortable with the security aspect. I've been very pleased with the service to date. No complaints.
Now, I just want to know what my DR strategy can/should be. I don't expect some rogue command from 1Password to start deleting my precious data, but if it were to happen...where could I go for a backup? Will Time Machine (on MacOs) back anything up that would be in any way useful from a DR perspective?
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Comments
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Hi @btownguy,
That's a great question. This is actually a question that we've been talking about a lot lately internally. It's something we want to help make better.
TimeMachine will be creating backups of the internal database we have, which would certainly be useful.
The steps to recovery from a disaster would change based on the type of disaster. Let's go over a couple.
Local Machine Crash
The most likely disaster, and the one you're probably thinking of, is that of a single machine suffering a catastrophic failure like a harddisk crash. I've only ever had one of these happen to me, and they're oh so painful. In this case, the only thing you need to make sure is that you have your Emergency Kit saved somewhere safe off of your computer. The TimeMachine backup you mentioned would make this event time consuming for you (restoring a machine from TimeMachine can easily take over 24 hours), but you'd be back up and running. Even without TimeMachine, if you had only the Emergency Kit saved, when you started up 1Password for the first time on the new machine, you would simply need to punch in your credentials and everything would be back.
Accidental Overwrite of Item(s)
Accidents happen. One day you might find yourself editing the wrong item, or editing the wrong part of the right item and lose some critical data. Previously, our solution would have been to have you restore from one of the backups that 1Password created for you, and hope that the data you needed was in that file. Now the solution is simpler. Our server has every edit you've made to the item. You can simply sign in to the website, find the item, then view the previous versions to restore what you need.
Making a Plan
It's awesome that you're trying to get ahead of the problem. When it comes to 1Password, I'd say that if you're doing the TimeMachine backup you mentioned, then you're doing what you can from your side to help yourself for major problems. But ultimately it's the Emergency Kit that you'll want saved away (printed, hopefully) that should provide you with the most protection.
As I mentioned, we still want to make this stuff better. We have some ideas we're working through and hope to develop that would provide additional safeguards for you.
I hope this helps.
Rick
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Thanks for the quick reply. It was thorough and clear. It's great to know that you have historical edits available online. I wasn't aware of that. My primary concern was with some kind of rogue process coming from the 1Password.com side deleting all of my data. An edge case to be sure. I'll rest easy knowing that even if the 1Password servers blew up or accidentally deleted everything, I still have a local copy in my Time Machine history that can be used to get my data back.
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@btownguy : good on you for thinking of that kind of problem. That kind of attack falls into the category of things we're trying to make sure never becomes a problem.
Rick
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