World Backup Day Spotlights a Frequently Neglected Task

World Backup Day

Don't be an April Fool. Backup your files and check your restores on March 31^st.

World Backup Day - Don't be an April Fool!

World Backup Day Spotlights a Frequently Neglected Task

You probably weren't aware of it, but today (Monday 31^st March) is World Backup Day. Yes, a day for remembering to back up all that important data, which falls on the eve of April Fools' Day.  The motto is, "Don't be an April Fool. Backup your files and check your restores on March 31st."

The concept of World Backup Day was created by a college student in 2011, and was initially geared towards the home consumer market ("friends don't let friends go without a backup"), but it now seems that businesses also can use a reminder about the importance of backing up critical data.  Even if businesses are performing backups, many aren't doing it right.

Kroll OnTrack Data Recovery Survey

This week, Kroll OnTrack, a supplier of data recovery products, released the results of a survey of 642 customers who had lost data.  Sixty-five percent reported having a backup system in place at the time of the data loss (up from 60% in a similar poll last year), and 55% said they backed up their data on a daily basis. But 65% also reported that their backup product wasn't current or operating at the time of they lost data.

The Kroll OnTrack survey shows simply having a backup solution in place is not enough to prevent data loss.

http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/company/press-room/press-releases/2014-more-people-backup-their-data/

Kroll OnTrack surmised several reasons the backup systems didn't prevent data loss, including failure to leave a computer on during a scheduled backup, the external drive used for backup was connected only intermittently, and the backup ran out of destination space.

Of the 35% who didn't have a backup in place, 49% cited the time to research and administer a backup product as the top barrier that kept them from implementing the technology.

The Problem with Backup

The problem with backup is that there are a small number of companies that have figured out that backup is a process in the realm of data protection.  Few have considered the whole picture of it’s importance, manage it well and don't have many problems.

Unfortunately, there's a much bigger community of companies where backup is considered as a necessary evil, which is dumped on the most junior people in the business, who mindlessly follow the procedures that have been there since 10 years ago the most junior person in the company put them together.  Therefore, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Not enough testing of backup processes also leads to trouble.  Companies don't find out until something goes wrong that they didn't back up the right data, or that they failed to upgrade the backup system when they upgraded a critical application.  Changes to computer systems can often mean that the data is in a different location and the backup procedures are not changed accordingly to take this into consideration.  Often it will transpire that the backup process is effectively backing up nothing of any value.

Also, there are many small businesses who think  that if they are using RAID this means they don't have to make backups anymore, or who rotate between three tapes for backup and discover that an important file was deleted five days ago, which is longer than they're retaining data.

Backups can be a hazardous but thankless job.  Nobody ever got promoted for doing backups well, but there are a number that have probably got their marching orders for doing them badly!

With backup software and the Cloud now so cheap, not having some form of backup is unacceptable in business.  The expense of a single data loss will far outweigh the cost of backup, and getting a service after you've lost the data is futile, to say the least.

For more information about how to protect you valuable data, please contact AWP Computer Services for a FREE consultation.

World Backup Day is March 31^st. Don't be a fool. Check your backups. Check your restores. Check us!