“Today, with everything being paperless, you could literally lose your whole business in the snap of a finger if you don’t have the right backups.” Those words weren’t spoken by someone trying to market a high-tech solution to manage veterinary practices’ digital data. They came from Mike Krajewski, practice manager at Dr. Nina’s Animal Hospital in Sarasota, Fla., who came out on the losing side of a battle with a malicious Russian hacker. Krajewski, who acknowledges that he knows “quite a bit about IT,” had a seemingly solid plan in place to secure and store the animal hospital’s data. It worked well, until the international hacker launched a sneak attack that could easily threaten any similarly vulnerable hospital. Although Krajewski basically had to start from scratch after the hack, he learned some valuable lessons that he shared to help other hospitals protect themselves.