Scenario: You are the only person in your IT department that knows all of the router logins and passwords, all the admin url's to your applications like Spiceworks, GFI Network Monitor, master code to the alarm system, administrator's password, well you get the idea.

It's all safely tucked away in your pc, your wallet, or even in your gray matter.

If that's the case, give yourself a big #FAIL. Information like this should not be only known by one person no matter how important you think you are.

Let's drop this down to a more personal level:

If you became incapacitated, would your spouse have all of the information to access bank accounts, retirement and health benefit accounts, voice mail password?

If not, it's time to make a "Hit By A Bus List"

This list would include but not limited to:

• Email account logins
• Bank and Investment logins
• Password to personal computers
• Voice mail passwords
• Alarm Codes
• eBay/PayPal information
• Important phone numbers
• People to contact
• Online vendor logins and account info

For SysAdmins keep in mind the above plus:

• Intranet URL's for applications
• ALL passwords
• List of favorites from your web browser that are relevant
• Business/Vendor contacts
• Tasks that are routinely done either manually or automatically.

You can see that these 2 list can overlap and are no where near complete.

In my past job, I had all of this on a cd that I updated every month and gave it to the Controller to put in the company safe in a tamper-proof envelope. At the end of the month, if information has changed, he would get the updated disk and I would destroy the old one. For the house, you do the same but keep it in a safe or safety deposit box.

Its little things like this that not everyone thinks about.