A Professional Tells Us How

Adequate insurance is a condition of license for professionals and, although we all know the types of insurance we need, the ins-and-outs of buying insurance can be very confusing. Oomph asked Anthea Mumby to give us some tips on professional liability insurance - something that all professionals giving advice to the public must carry.

Oomph: What are some of the key factors you need to take into account when buying insurance?

Anthea Mumby: The first is to know your insurance broker and make sure he or she has experience in the area of professional liability or 'Errors and Ommissions' insurance as it is commonly known. This is 'specialty' insurance and you want to make sure you're dealing with a pro and not someone who does just one or two policies of this type in a year.

My other piece of advice is to take the application process seriously. People look at insurance applications as just another business form they have to fill in, instead of an important legal document they need to read and complete carefully.

It's important to read the policy thoroughly [yes, all that fine print!...] so you know exactly what is and isn't covered, how to report claims, how to cancel your insurance coverage, and other details. Pay special attention to policy exclusions, especially if you have an 'all risk' policy. By knowing exactly what is not covered, you can rest assured in the knowledge that you are insured against any other causes of loss.

Oomph: What are some mistakes people make in their applications?

Anthea: The worst is not making full disclosure, like for instance not 'fessing' up if you've got a potential problem on a project and you may be putting a claim through once you've procured coverage. With respect to design firms, you need to disclose if you work on a design/build basis, which is covered by special carriers, is more expensive and requires that you take special steps or specific project management procedures to help prevent mistakes and lawsuits.

Mistakes or omissions can come back to haunt you when a claim is turned down or coverage is denied because the insurance company only had partial or innacurate information. It's the applicant's responsibility to ensure that all information is correct and complete.

Oomph: What are other situations to watch out for?

Anthea: Our area of specialty is coverage of design professionals, so I'll focus on two areas which can lead to problems in this type of practice. The first is when designers hire a contractor and bills the contractors' services through their firm. This makes them liable for the contractors' performance and/or mistakes - which is something they have limited control over.

Another common mistake is to delay reporting a claim. The minute you realize that a claim is possible or imminent you should contact your insurance broker who will then contact the insurance company. Reporting a possible incident is unlikely to affect your coverage or your premiums and can in fact help manage a situation and keep it from getting worse.

For more information on Mumby Insurance Brokers Inc., visit their website at: www.mumby.com

Backing Up Your Computer Remotely Over the Internet

Love it or hate it - your single most important practice tool and support system is your computer - without it, and the data it contains, you're out of business.

Backing up your computer files is your main defense against any computer malfunction or theft. Should the worst happen, with adequate backups all you will lose is the time is takes to upload the data onto the repaired system or on to another computer. Without backups, you could lose part or all of your practice data and files. Besides the monetary value of the loss, you could also expose yourself to serious liabilities should the loss cause you to miss a deadline. It’s not uncommon for companies to file for bankruptcy after a major loss of computer data.

And yet, a surprising number of companies don't back up or do so sporadically. The main reason is that backing up properly is a pain - it's challenging for those of us who aren't tech-savvy, time-consuming and expensive to set up, and needs lots of discipline to keep it going.  

However, the advent of high-speed internet has made a new and convenient method possible and a Canadian company - Virtual Tape Drive - is quickly establishing itself as a leader in the field. We asked VTD's President, Blue  Melnick, to explain how it all works.

Oomph: How do you get set-up to back-up remotely?

Blue Melnick: To start, you need a high-speed Internet connection. Dial-up doesn't work and cable "light" works only if you don't have a lot of data. With that in place the set up is straightforward. We go through a Q and A with the client to determine what needs to be backed up. Then we install the back-up software, schedule the backups and do the initial one, which takes longer than the regular daily backup. After that, the system backs up every day at the scheduled time and you receive a status report confirming the backup. The set up is also done remotely - we don't have to be physically in your office.

 
Oomph: It sounds fabulous, but how do I know it's working?

Blue: This is an excellent question, especially considering that 34% of companies that backup using tape drives fail to test their backup tapes. Of those that do, 77% have found backup failures and data corruption. [Fact provided by The Strategic Research Institute].

So, with tape drives you have to perform the backup and you also have to manually restore the data at least once per week to ensure that it remains recoverable. The other problem with tape drives is that with each backup you overwrite the previous backup. If you accidentally delete a file and then perform your backup, you also lose that file in the previous backup - which is why you need to set a rotation system with additional tapes - cumbersome, complicated and expensive... 

Virtual Tape Drive automatically stores 71 historical versions of your information over the last 52 weeks. This means that in each 12-month period, you can access your files as they existed on each of the previous 7 days, the previous 52 Sundays, and the last day of each of the previous 12 months. This lets you retrieve files that you lost weeks or even months earlier.

Oomph: Can the data be 'highjacked', stolen or hacked while it's in transit from my computer to your server?

Blue: No. Virtual Tape Drive protects your information against playback attacks, impersonation attacks and Man-In-The-Middle attacks.

Prior to leaving your computer, Virtual Tape Drive compresses and encrypts your data using 448-bit Blowfish encryption technology. To understand what 448-bit encryption means, consider first that online banking technology [employed by all 5 major Canadian banks] uses 128-bit encryption, resulting in 3.4028 x 10 to the power of 38 possible character combinations. For each additional bit, the protection or security level doubles: 129-bit encryption is twice as secure as 128-bit, 130-bit encryption is twice as secure as 129-bit, and so on. No computer in known existence has broken the Blowfish encryption technology.

As well, your data is always housed on our offsite servers in its encrypted state, and only you have the 56-character code [created at the time of installation] needed to decrypt your files.

The integrity of Virtual Tape Drive is also secured. Each Virtual Tape Drive program encrypts portions of its program code to make reverse engineering very difficult. The small amount of data necessary to operate the Virtual Tape Drive software resides in a double-encrypted form placed in the computer's registry. The key to unlock this data is based exclusively on that computer's own digital signature. Moving the data from one computer to another will not allow you to crack open the encrypted data.

Oomph: OK, so how much does all this peace of mind cost?

Blue: We charge a one-time set up fee and a monthly fee. The set up fee includes the data storage consultation, the installation of the Virtual Tape Drive application on your system, a detailed inventory of everything being backed up by VTD, regular monitoring of the backups, all future software upgrades and updates, telephone and on-site technical support. The monthly service charge depends on the quantity of data [measured in gigabytes] and the type of data. Static data [data that doesn't change] is stored at a lower rate per GB than dynamic data, which is data that changes regularly.

As of July 1, 2007, our average monthly service charge was $5.83/GB or $24.82/month.

For more information on Virtual Tape Drive, please visit their website at www.vtdcanada.com

Top Computer Safety Tips

• Backing Up:
  • Back up all your data and your system files. A 'ghost' or complete duplicate of each computer's system files will make it much easier and faster to get back up to speed in the event of a major hard disk failure. Otherwise you'll have to start reconfiguring everything from scratch.
  • If you have a Local Area Network, when backing up the server, files stored on individual workstation drives won’t be backed up!
  • If you back up on to your computer or your server’s hard drive, you must copy the backup on a disk, tape, external drive, or remotely to another computer. Otherwise, if the computer or the server with the backup is damaged or gone, so is the backup.
  • Test back up tapes and disks monthly to ensure that you can access and upload the information. Make sure the backups work!
  • Store your computer backups off-site. This will ensure you can recreate your system in the event of a theft or a fire, or if you don’t have access to your office. If you choose to store backups in your office, store them in fire-resistant media safe.

• Access:
  • Use passwords to control access to your network and workstations. In a LAN make sure everyone has a password to access the system. Have them log out every night and log on every morning. Keep track of people’s passwords.
  • Establish network permission levels for users based on their roles and responsibilities, so users can only access the files, folders and drives they need to their job. Leaving open access to confidential files is one of the most common breaches of privacy in offices.
  • If you access the Internet though a wireless laptop or have a wireless network in your office remember that without proper protection wireless systems can be extremely vulnerable to intrusion or attack. The problem is exacerbated because many wireless systems come with their security features turned off in order to make installation easier. People activate their machines or boot up their networks and fail to activate the password system
    • Set up passwords as soon as the computer [or the network] is up and running. Passwords use various levels of encryption. Choose 128-bit level or stronger.
    • Unless you have activated top-notch security features on your wireless laptop, do not transmit sensitive data [like your credit card number or confidential files] in a public “hot-spot” like a café or an airport – which are becoming favourite trolling spots for digital thieves.

With a Little Help From Our Friends...

We just took part in our very first trade show - IIDEX/Neocon 2007 and we did really well!

One of the reasons is that we had a stellar presence - an attention-grabbing booth that became a popular and comfortable stopping point  - thanks to the help and FABULOUS furnishings provided by Klaus by Nienkämper and Tusch Seating!