When faced with an extreme weather event – like a hurricane, flood, wildfire, or tornado – preparation is key. Stocking up on supplies can help you ride out some natural disasters in place. For others, you should have an evacuation plan that your entire family is aware of, and a bag of essentials that you can quickly pack and grab on the way out the door.
What you may not have time to think about in the moment, though, are all the important documents and details you’ll need, both to get you through the disaster and to get back to day-to-day life after. Essentially, you should have a “digital go-bag" the way that you would prepare a packed suitcase.
Why a password manager?
Before the next disaster strikes, take the time to create a digital vault that can house copies of important documents, contact information, account passwords, PIN codes, and more. Ideally the physical copies of your documents will be in one place that you can easily grab as you evacuate. But you may not have time, or a disaster may strike while you’re away from home. In that case, having digital backups of all your important documents and personal information for your family will be invaluable.
A password manager is a smart place to store those details for a few reasons:
- Organize everything in one convenient, safe place: By storing and organizing all important documents and data in one place, you know where to go when you need something. The search functionality makes it easy to find the information you need immediately. It takes some work up front to upload everything and organize it the way you like, but once it’s set up you’ll always have secure digital access to critical information in the case of an emergency.
- Stored items are backed up and synced: No matter where you find yourself, or what device you need to use to access your information, a password manager like LastPass will securely sync your data where you need it. You don’t need to worry about backing things up regularly – it's built into the service.
- Stored items are heavily encrypted: You create the master password to your vault, and only you have that key to your information. Data is encrypted locally on the device before syncing to the password manager service for secure storage.
- Offline access is available: If cell towers are out and you find yourself without a signal or data connection, you can still pull up the password manager mobile app or browser extension to access your vault offline. If you’ve used that device at least once before, a secure local copy of the vault will be available for you to view stored items.
What to store in your password manager
A password manager offers a few ways to store important data. Of course, saving and organizing usernames and passwords to online accounts is one of the primary functions of a password manager.
Be sure to either manually add all passwords to the vault, or let the password manager capture them as you browse and log in to your accounts.
Other information you can store in pre-formatted templates includes:
- Credit cards
- Debit cards
- Other payment cards
- Addresses
- Bank accounts
- Social Security cards
- Insurance cards
- Driver’s Licenses
- Membership cards
And more. But when preparing for a natural disaster, we recommend taking it a step further and using the attachments feature to store copies of important documents. For example, with your Social Security card, you could enter the information into the template, then attach a photocopy of the physical card to the digital record (or take a picture with your phone and upload it). We recommend doing this for every important document that is relevant to every member of your family (including your pets).
When preparing for natural disasters, we recommend creating digital records and photocopies of documents such as:
- Will and/or power of attorney documents
- Property deeds
- Property insurance and recent photos of the property’s condition
- Birth certificates
- Social security cards
- Health insurance cards and policy information
- Car insurance
- Car title and registration
- Driver’s license
- Passports
- Emergency contact information for local authorities, relatives, and friends
- Prescriptions
- Medicine lists and contact information for doctors
- Bank and investment account numbers
- Pet vaccinations and contact information for veterinarian
This list is by no means comprehensive and should be tailored to fit the assets and life circumstances of each individual or family. The more comprehensive your digital vault, the better prepared you’ll be for life’s unexpected events. It’s hard to plan for the unexpected, especially when it seems like it “won’t happen to me”, but the exercise of organizing and copying your life’s important details in one secure place will make the rebuilding process a lot easier for you and your family, should the worst happen.
