Storing passwords in a browser allows for longer, more secure passwords to be used with relative ease. Its just a simple fact, stronger passwords are more difficult to remember and they are also more difficult to type. But storing website passwords in a browser is a very bad security decision in an environment where people frequently have access to other computers and workstations like your law office setting.

Each password stored in a browser is a security accident waiting to happen. The more people that have physical access to the computer, the more the security threat is increased. If any computers in your law office with stored passwords are left unattended, an unauthorized user can check recent sites visited by viewing the browser history and login to the site with the stored password. Temporary employees, cleaning staff and even clients left in a conference room or roaming about the halls can easily login to any account on an unattended computer with stored web passwords.

Having computers that are protected with system logins is simply not enough because inevitably, some of your law office computers will be left on and unattended at some point even if only for a few minutes.

GoMatters recommends that you do not permit the storage of any web passwords in your office web browsers. GoMatters does not provide a “Remember” option for passwords at login.

The truth is most law offices operate their computer networks like most home computer users – rarely if ever is a system backed up properly. And even rarer still is the chance that someone in your law office knows how to restore a backup.

There are basically two types of setups for your small to mid-size law office network – a peer to peer network where each computer shares resources and files with other computers on the network or a server based network where one centralized computer stores your law office data in one location that is accessed by users throughout your office. If you have a setup where you are sharing files from computer to computer, to backup your system safely, you need to be backing up every computer in your office. If you have 10 computers in your office with data on them, you need to backup all ten.

If everyone in your office is saving data to a server, your network setup costs and management may be more difficult, but your backup scenarios are less complicated. But having all of your data in one central location like your server creates a single point of failure for all of your data. If you server goes, your data goes with it. Not too much of a problem if you are backing up all of your data and keeping redundant copies offsite in a safe place and have another backup server on standby ready to be fired up at a moment’s notice… what? Your office doesn’t do that? You better. Your data is your practice.

No matter what your office network setup looks like, you need to make copies of your data backup and store the backup copies offsite. Offsite backups guard against loss of data by fires, flood, theft and other physical threats to your data.

GoMatters provides an easy solution to doing away with the hassle of backing up your law office data. All data stored in GoMatters is dispersed on our secure servers around the world. Multiple redundant copies of data stored with GoMatters means your data will never face the single point of failure problems an office server creates. Computer hardware failures in your office do nothing to your data stored with GoMatters. Data stored in GoMatters is always available no matter what computer you are using.

SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is a method for encrypting and securing data sent from one computer to another. Data sent without SSL can be seen by hackers using “sniffer” software. If a hacking eavesdropper intercepts data sent without SSL from one computer to another, the eavesdropper can read the information in plain text. E-commerce and banking sites use SSL to protect sensitive data like passwords and credit card numbers. GoMatters uses SSL sessions to encrypt data transfers to and from your law office while using GoMatters.

Data transmissions to and from GoMatters are secure, but your law office data sent to other computers over the internet can be intercepted by eavesdroppers and read by a third party unless you are taking steps to properly encrypt your data.

Your law office email is one place where you can make an easy change to better secure your data by using SSL. If you are using Gmail for your law office email, make sure you force Gmail to use SSL by turning on the “Enable SSL” option under your”Domain settings” panel. Checking the Gmail SSL option will force all connections to Gmail from your office accounts to use SSL. If you don’t have access to your Gmail domain settings, you can simply type an “s” after the “http” in your browser and load the page. Placing the “s” after the “http” and reloading the page will shift you to Gmail’s SSL for that session.

If you have your own domain name for your law firm and use a hosted email service, contact the host about installing an SSL certificate for your domain. Some hosts offer an SSL option for your web email and you simply have to visit the “https” URL of your web mail address.