Tech Forum

I'm new FC in our Ward. After MLS prompts and a backup to the C: drive is completed, they also do a backup to a thumb drive. Is this appropriate, directed and necessary? Thank you.
PS: I'm an IT professional by day and thumb drives are notorious for data leakage/loss...

That was certainly the directive for a time. I can't find any current documents that call for that, but nothing to discourage that either. The last batch of computers I got included a flash drive for backup. Backups are not as important as they once were. Most information is in SLC's computers. I think only the budget information is local. Even then, I think the system makes backups to SLC during send/receive.

As I understand it, the MLS backups are encrypted and require a password that was part of MLS at the time of the backup to be able to open them. So, while I wouldn't go around making them public, casual data spillage from MLS backups isn't a high concern.

But you may be interested in the following links: Meetinghouse Technology Policy and Keeping Church Information Safe.