It is a scene that is played out across campus every semester, a student on a laptop studies diligently for exams. She runs out of battery power and looks for a plug in. She finds one just around the corner, plugs in and goes back for her books. When she returns 30 seconds later, the laptop is gone. In 30 sec she has lost all her study notes and all her papers for the term. The theft is reported to security but the laptop is long gone. If only she had thought to back up her papers and notes on iCloud, Onedrive, Dropbox or Google Drive.  Then she would at least be able to study for her final.  Now she has little to work with and exams are looming. Now she has to contact her professors, ask for extensions and hope that they will be granted.  She was hoping to ace this term, now she just hopes to pass. This isn’t hypothetical. This is a real story that has been repeated over and over again.

This semester, don’t repeat the story.  Treat your devices like cash. If you wouldn’t leave a 20$ bill somewhere, don’t leave your device there. It takes less than 30 seconds for a criminal to pocket your smartphone or walk off with your laptop.  It takes less than 30 seconds to jeopardize a grade you have worked all term to achieve.