Your Backup Key — Setup & Safekeeping Guide

Why this matters

We keep an encrypted copy of your data so that if anything goes wrong — a bad update, a mistake, hardware failure, even ransomware — your business can be restored. Those backups are locked so that no one else can read them. Your key is the only thing that can unlock them.

The backup and the key are kept apart on purpose. Together they restore you; the backup alone is unreadable to anyone.

The golden rule: keep your key in two independent places — never just one, and never both in the same place. If one is ever lost or destroyed, the other saves you.

1 Find your key

Your Larauna administrator will give you a 64-character recovery key — a long line of letters and numbers. It looks like the example below (yours will be different). This is the whole secret; treat it like the master key to a safe.

Example only — never share a real key by email, chat or text message.

2 Save it in your password manager (copy #1)

A password manager (1Password, Bitwarden, iCloud Keychain, Dashlane, or similar) is the safest everyday home for your key. If you don't have one, ask us — we'll help you choose. The steps are the same in all of them:

Illustration — your password manager may look a little different, but every one has a "Secure Note" or "New item".

Open your password manager and choose New Secure Note (or "New item").
In the title, type Larauna Backup Key.
Paste the full key into the note. Double-check the first and last few characters match what we gave you.
Add a short note: "Unlocks Larauna backups — do not delete" and today's date.
Save. That's copy #1 done.

3 Make one offline copy (copy #2)

Copy #1 lives on your devices. Copy #2 should live somewhere separate and offline, so a lost laptop or a hacked account can't take both at once. Pick whichever you'll actually keep safe:

Print it and lock it in a drawer, safe, or filing cabinet — ideally at a different location than your main computer.
Or write it clearly on a card and seal it in an envelope in a safe place.
Or give a sealed copy to one trusted person (a business partner, your accountant, a family member) who can hand it back if you ever need it.

The two copies should be independent: if a thief took your laptop and phone, copy #2 in the safe still exists. That single idea is what this whole guide is about.

4 Do a 60-second check

A copy you can't find in an emergency isn't a copy. Right now, while it's fresh:

Open the password manager entry and confirm you can read the full key.
Confirm your offline copy is where you think it is, and is legible.
Tell the one trusted person (if you chose that option) where the copy is and what it's for.

Done? You now have two independent copies of your key. This is the single most important thing you can do to protect your ability to recover.

Living with your key

You will almost never need to touch it. Here's how to look after it over time.

Do

Keep it in your password manager and one offline place.
Tell one trusted backup person where it is.
Ask us to rotate it if it's ever exposed (emailed, texted, photographed).
Review it once a year — still there, still legible?

Don't

Email, message or text it — those channels get hacked.
Keep only one copy, or both copies on the same device.
Save it in a plain notes app or a spreadsheet.
Store it as a screenshot in your camera roll.

If the key is ever lost

Being honest about this is important, because it's why the two-copies rule matters so much. The impact depends entirely on the situation:

Situation	What it means	Severity
Key lost, but your site & data are fine	Your business keeps running normally — the key only unlocks backups, not your live data. We simply issue a fresh key and start a new backup set. You're briefly without a safety net until then.	Low
Key lost and a real disaster hits before it's replaced	If the server is destroyed (or hit by ransomware) while every copy of the key is gone, the encrypted backups cannot be unlocked by anyone — including us. That data would be unrecoverable.	Critical

There is no back door — and that's deliberate. A way to unlock backups without the key would let anyone who stole them do the same. Two independent copies is your recovery plan; it's simple and it works.