WASHINGTON (BLOGGER) DESIGN COMPANY COMPUTERS STOLEN Getting Robbed | Blue Flavor

As you may have noticed, our blog posts have been somewhat few and far between in the past week or so. We promise there’s a good reason for it.

To make a long story short, our office was robbed. Three times, in fact. The first incident occurred back in May, when two individuals (whom we caught on tape) broke in through our front door. They came in, stole two computers, and departed.

After the first break in, we had a security system with door breaks and motion detectors installed. Despite this, someone (we suspect the two men from the initial incident) broke in a second time, by busting out our perimeter windows. They were able to clean us out of nearly everything.

th, 2008 at 12:19 p.m.

We lost computers, hard drives, all of our gaming equipment, mice, keyboards, power-strips, routers…even some rechargeable batteries. Luckily they didn’t get into where we keep sensitive files and or to our client files and important digital documents. 

To add insult to injury, the third robbery happened just days later when they broke in through a window again and stole one last computer (which was, by the way, tethered to the ground).

Security

It’s been a rough few weeks and we’ve made a lot of changes while dealing with the administrative aftershocks. I don’t want to outline everything in great detail here, but I will say we’ve dramatically heightened our security efforts. On-site foot patrols, additional security cameras, massive password changes, and a vamped up internal security system are just a few of the measures we’ve taken.

We also decided to replace all our iMacs with laptops, so we don’t have to leave anything of value in the office. If you’re interested in laptop security, Lifehacker has a great post on the topic.

Admin

As for the rest of the administrative nightmare, well; It actually hasn’t been that much of a nightmare at all, as it turns out. We work with Hartford Insurance, who’ve been easy to deal with and effective at reimbursing us so far. In part because of this, we were able to quickly purchase new hardware as needed. And because so much of our work is stored on a shared space in Amazon’s S3, and regularly backed up and often recorded inBasecamp, etc., we barely missed a beat in the billable department.

We’re also in the process of creating new and exhaustive inventory lists for both old and new items, as well as a new filing system which will make locating and reviewing all company purchases easy to do.

Our only real hurdle has been motivating our property management company to quickly sign off on changes they’re responsible for, but our building managers have been as helpful and cooperative as possible while dealing with their corporate.

As you’d expect, this has been a sobering and annoying experience. Yet it’s also been surprisingly smooth because we’re mobile and accustomed to working remotely, and because our whole team has pitched in. If you have any questions about preventative security (or any other type of security) for your business, let us know — We’d be happy to help.