“I solemnly vow to make a backup of my important documents and precious memories on March 31st.
I will also let my friends and family know about World Backup Day.
Friends don’t leave friends without a backup .”
Data loss is every tech enthusiast’s worst nightmare.
Computer hardware is fallible.
You never know when your ten-year-old SSD or hard drive might kick the bucket.
It could be due to a power surge, accidental damage, or even just the degradation that comes with old age, but drive failure will happen to almost all of us someday.
When it does, what will you do?
You could always take your hardware to a data recovery expert and see what (if anything) they can extract, but in this case, it is better to be proactive instead of reactive.
Performing frequent, system-wide backups of all your most important data is one way to accomplish that.
Unfortunately, backing up your sensitive photos, videos, and game saves can be a slow and tedious process.
With the busy online lives many of us now lead, spending a few hours a week protecting our data isn’t always practical.
Still, even the occasional backup is better than nothing.
Today is the perfect time to put that thought into practice:
It is World Backup Day, an unofficial holiday (founded in 2011) that encourages us all to take some time to safeguard our most important information.
It’s helpful to think of backups like financial emergency funds.
We’re fortunate enough to have access to the most powerful computers to date.
But what would you do if you lost everything on your computer?
Crashes happen more often than you think.
Data recovery can cost you hundreds of dollars.
Recovering everything you have stored on your computer is not guaranteed.
I understand.
Life gets hectic.
It is easy to forget to back up your files.
You hope you never need them, but when you do, they can “turn a major crisis into a minor inconvenience“.
So, let’s say you agree with that sentiment and want to participate this year.
How would you even go about doing that?
World Backup Day is a commemorative date celebrated annually by the backup industry and tech industry all over the world on 31 March.
It highlights the importance of protecting data and keeping systems and computers secure.
World Backup Day started with a post on Reddit where a user wrote about losing their hard drive and wishing someone had reminded them about how important it is to backup data.
The campaign started by Ismail Jadun in 2011.
Every year news outlets write articles about the importance of backing up data on World Backup Day.
Every year on 31 March, companies tweet and have podcasts about the importance of backing up data to prevent data loss.
On the website WorldBackupDay.com people can make a pledge in ten languages on various social media channels about the importance of backing up their data.
World Backup Day is recognized as a national calendar day on many national holiday websites.
The observation originally started as World Backup Month and later changed to World Backup Day.
Maxtor, a company specializing in hard drives, initiated this annual celebration.
Now taking place every year on 31 March, World Backup Day reminds us to make multiple copies of our digital treasures or risk losing them all forever.
The day also serves to instill better online and technological practices.
Considering how reliant humans are on technology now, we still have not cultivated habits that will ensure that our information and personal data are secure and safe.
It happens to all of us.
That one precious photo or video that was captured to immortalize a moment, but it doesn’t exist anymore.
Broken hard drives, hacked computers, erratic phones or any other glitch that erased irretrievable items.
We have all experienced it.
World Backup Day falls on the day before April Fools Day, which is perfect timing.
Pranksters and hackers are prone to play jokes on unsuspecting individuals, so it is better to be safe than sorry.
The holiday was observed for the first time in 2011 and over time, has become that one day when we won’t say “we’ll back it up tomorrow”.
WORLD BACKUP DAY TIMELINE
13 September 1956: First external hard drive
IBM engineer Reynold B. Johnson comes up with the idea of the external hard drive — the IBM 350 Disk File.
1960s: Cloud storage
Computer scientist Dr. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider is believed to have invented cloud storage.
1998: “Toy Story 2” almost wiped
A year before the release of “Toy Story 2”, somebody enters a command on the drives where Pixar stores the film’s files, deleting 90% of the film.
2011: World Backup Day
After discussing backups on Reddit, student Ismail Jadun jokingly creates World Backup Day, eventually legitimizing it.
BY THE NUMBERS
60% — the percentage of incomplete backups.
50% — the percentage of restores that fail.
50% — the percentage of people who will never know that their computer systems have been attacked.
20% — the percentage of all small businesses that are likely to be hacked within one year.
20% — the percentage of medium-sized businesses that lose critical data once every five years.
WORLD BACKUP DAY ACTIVITIES
- Copy your files to an external hard drive.
Set aside 15 minutes to an hour to back up all of the existing files on your desktop, laptop or PC.
Simply purchase a hard drive of your liking – 1TB drives or more are recommended – and copy your files to the drive.
- Play in the clouds.
Can’t buy a hard drive in time?
No worries!
There are plenty of companies that specialize in storing your documents online.
Do your research and figure out which service works best for you.
- Back that thing up party.
Invite all the employees on your team to back up their files with one of the methods above.
This will create a safer culture among your staff and prevent any projects from slipping through the crack.
The last thing you need is a client asking for a file that was wrongfully discarded.
5 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD BACKUP IMMEDIATELY
- One little mistake can lead to a disastrous loss of data.
- Computer viruses are very common.
New types of viruses can penetrate even the best anti-virus protection firewalls.
- It’s always good to have a copy.
Multiple copies of really important files will put your mind at ease.
- Sudden system shutdowns:
That thesis you are writing, yeah, back it up!
- Hardware failure:
In the event that your device fails for good, your personal files will be safe and secure on the cloud storage or alternate device.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
Crashes happen more often than not.
Are you prepared to lose that project you have been working on all semester?
What about those important documents you stored to help you get ready for tax season?
Are they easily replaceable?
We advise you to make copies if you haven’t done so yet.
If your files are irreplaceable then we highly encourage you to back up your documents.
Keep in mind that it is better to be safe than sorry.
Duplicate your files on to as many storage devices as you like to make sure that you are clear from accidents that may occur.
Just like opening an old, untouched photo album, it can often be a trip down nostalgia lane to dig into old folders on long-forgotten hard drives.
World Backup Day on 31 March reminds us to protect our precious digital documents as we have become more reliant on technology.
There’s always that one photo, video or memory that you took the time to save, yet for some reason, it is not yours anymore.
Whether it was a lost or broken phone, a faulty hard drive or some other technological mishap, it can feel impossible to keep all your files in one piece.
Try not to think of it as a hassle.
Remember when you swore to backup all those pictures and videos from your last vacation?
Now’s the time, buddy.
Each day we depend more and more on data to serve our lives.
Although it may be difficult to imagine a future where our precious files are not as accessible as they are today, it is not our job to take digital memories for granted.
Put your foot down.
Take a stand.
Back that thing up!
WHAT IS BACKUP?
A backup is a second copy of all your important files — for example, your family photos, home videos, documents, and emails.
Instead of storing it all in one place (like your computer), you keep another copy of everything somewhere safe.
If you haven’t already, invest in an external hard drive, USB stick or purchase some space in the cloud.
While you’re waiting for your file transfer to reach 100%, take a moment to plan out your next big data dump.
Because let’s face it, one day a year isn’t nearly enough.
It may not be a widely celebrated holiday, but World Backup Day — celebrated on 31 March, just ahead of April Fools’ Day — aims to encourage computer users to regularly back up their data.
That appears to be something many users don’t do.
It’s a day all about backup awareness, and getting more people to start backing up their computers if they don’t already or — for those who do — to take a serious look at their backup strategy, and make sure it’s up to snuff.
It started in 2011 and early on, World Backup Day was sponsored by a bunch of companies that sell backup products or services, like hard drives or cloud backup.
So in that sense, World Backup Day is kind of like Valentine’s Day.
Part of its popularity is driven by companies that want to sell you stuff.
But now, the focus is much more on education.
It is also just a really good regular reminder to check your backup hygiene.
I am talking about protecting your most precious digital documents.
The kind of stuff that is heartbreaking to lose, because it simply cannot be replaced.
To be clear, backups don’t just protect against hard drive crashes.
There are many many ways to lose data.
You can lose data in natural disasters like floods or fires, for example.
Or you can lose data if your computer is stolen.
And then there’s ransomware.
John Fung, Director of Cybersecurity Operations at Morgan Franklin Consulting says:
“Ransomware commonly targets backups to prevent companies from restoring them rather than paying a ransom.
That is why backups should be stored offline or in a read-only format.
Ideally, backups should also be geographically distributed.
That way if a natural disaster, power outage, etc., knocks out an organization’s primary systems, the backups provide immense benefits.“
Jeff Costlow, CISO of Extra Hop, echoes this warning:
“Ransomware is a shadow that hangs over all organizations today.
This World Backup Day should be a call for all organizations to examine how their backup and recovery plan weaves into their overall security strategy to ensure they are protected in the event of a ransomware attack.
Sadly, organizations must take further precautions and cannot rely solely on their data backups.
Today’s ransomware has become an advanced threat with the ‘hat trick’ of exfiltration, encryption, and software exploitation.
It used to be that the sole endgame of ransomware was encryption.
Deploy the ransomware.
Encrypt the files.
Demand payment in exchange for the keys.
Today, ransomware criminals have introduced payment incentives at multiple steps in the kill chain, from exfiltration of data to exploitation of software.
While it is key for organizations to ensure a strong backup and recovery strategy is in place for business continuity, they can no longer guarantee that their private data won’t be released.”
Rick McElroy, principal cybersecurity strategist at VMware reminds us that:
“Testing the viability of backups is vital amid continued warnings from the Biden administration urging the private sector to immediately harden their cyber defenses.
As geopolitical conflict spills over into cyberspace, organizations should test backup procedures to ensure that critical data can be rapidly restored if the organization is impacted by ransomware or a destructive cyberattack.
Critical infrastructure providers, in particular, should operate under the assumption that they will be hit by targeted attacks.
Prepare for the unexpected, test backups, and warm up incident response muscles.“
In recent years, we have seen the rise of malicious software that infects your computer, encrypts your files, and makes it difficult, or entirely impossible, for you to get them back unless you pay a sum of money (unless you’ve backed them up).
Most experts agree data loss isn’t a question of “if“ it will happen to you, but a question of “when“.
When data loss happens, having an automatic, redundant, offsite backup system can mean the difference between a minor nuisance and a total catastrophe.
An American online backup company Backblaze every year commission a survey, asking:
“How often do you backup all the data on your computer?“
Their most recent numbers, from 2015, say that:
25% of computer users have never backed up their computer.
The good news is that number is decreasing.
Back in 2008, when they started the survey, 38% had never backed up their computer.
But still, a quarter of people, when their hard drives die, will lose everything.
Another interesting stat from Backblaze:
Only 8% of people surveyed back up their computers daily.
And that number is headed in the wrong direction.
Back in 2012, it was 10%.
So fewer people are backing up their stuff every day, which, again, exposes them to data loss.
Cloud storage — or saving your data on remote servers, accessed through the Internet — can be a great part of a backup strategy.
But the cloud shouldn’t be the only place you store data.
With backups, the aim is to avoid a single point of failure.
So if all your documents live in Google Docs, or all your photos live on Facebook, for example — and you don’t have a copy somewhere else — that’s a single point of failure.
That means you could wake up tomorrow and they would be gone.
The thing to keep in mind with cloud services is that you should have another copy somewhere.
The good news is that many cloud services let you download a copy of everything you have stored with them.
Google has their “Takeout” service.
Above: Logo of Google Docs
Facebook lets you download all your data, including photos, as one big file.
It is not a bad idea to do that periodically, just in case.
A great place to start is by taking a minute to think about what’s most important to you.
What are the photos or videos or documents that are the most important to me?
What would I be heartbroken to lose if it went away forever?
Then ask yourself:
How many of those files exist in only one place?
How many photos do you have sitting on your phone, and nowhere else?
How many of your important documents are only in Google Drive, for example?
Above: Logo of Google Drive
Once you have identified the important data that is at risk, make a copy.
That might mean hooking up an external hard drive and running the backup software that came with your computer, or uploading photos from your phone to Dropbox, or downloading a copy of all your Facebook photos and saving them locally on your computer.
The World Backup Day website has some more useful tips on how to put a good backup strategy in place.
It is different for everybody, but the basic principle is the same:
More than one copy, in more than one place.
Ben Gitenstein, VP of Product at Qumulo warns of the growing volume of data:
Your data’s growth isn’t slowing down.
And the amount of data growing in your system can outpace your IT or security team’s ability to back up and protect it.
You need a backup solution that can keep up.
What if you didn’t back up your data and disaster strikes?
It’s not the end of the world…
If you have disaster recovery.
If your data is compromised, start by undoing the damage.
Try reverting to the last good version of your data.
Snapshots, data retention policies, consistent or tertiary sites, like the cloud, will all add layers of defense.
A disaster recovery plan will help you get back on your feet and keep your business running after a worst-case scenario.
But ideally, you won’t have to revert to DR because you protected your data in the first place.
It’s important to regularly review your backup strategy says Florindo Gallicchio, managing director and head of strategic solutions at Net SPI:
“One way to do this is by ensuring that backups with all of the organization’s critical data are routinely, completely, and securely assessed — as this is a necessary step in recovering from a possible ransomware attack.
These backups should be encrypted so that sensitive data is not disclosed and stored in such a way that an organization can recover its data in a timely manner, as this is necessary to minimize disruption to business operations.
Additionally, organizations should regularly revisit and test disaster recovery and business continuity plans to validate that ransomware and other threats won’t impact the integrity of any backups.“
Adrian Moir, technology evangelist and principal engineer at Quest Software says organizations must take responsibility for their data, even when it’s stored in the cloud.
“Most businesses assume their data security is totally in the hands of their cloud providers, which can lead to unfortunate situations when data is not backed up.
This is why organizations must follow the shared responsibility model, which discourages the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude and reduces the risk of lost data.
Unfortunately, those following the model struggle with backups from the cloud, because data is stored in slow object Blob storage and the system is designed for the endpoint user — not the IT admin’s backup experience.
Going forward, we expect to see new approaches to API’s that provide faster data restoration and give cloud customers more control and speed over their backups.”
Finally, Steve Petryschuk, Product Strategy Director at Auvik offers five handy backup tips:
- Automate your backups!
Don’t spend your precious time manually backing up your workstations and network devices.
- Check regularly to make sure your automated backups are running regularly.
- Make an off-site copy of your backup.
That could be to the cloud, or to another physical location.
You just don’t want all your data in one location.
- Test your backups!
You don’t want to find out your backups are corrupted when you’re in need of them.
Test restoring them often to ensure you have a solid recovery plan.
- Make sure you’re backing up as much as you can.
We often think about workstations and servers to back up but don’t forget about other data types, like data hosted in your cloud services.
Sadly, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution.
Backups are personal.
The ideal strategy will vary depending on your values and preferences.
In short, though, there are both local and cloud storage options available to you, they don’t have to be complicated.
Every year on 31 March, World Backup Day is a particularly good day to think about your backup strategy.
Since security incidents cannot now be completely prevented, this must be taken into account in backup planning.
The security-oriented operation of the backup infrastructure is therefore very important.
Small differences determine the length of downtime or even complete data loss, as we have seen in many ransonware attacks in the recent past.
The classic 3-2-1 rule is no longer sufficient, I recommend implementing its extension, the 3-2-1-1-0 Rule:
- 3 different copies of all company files
- 2 copies are stored on different storage media
- 1 copy of the storage media is located away from the company headquarters
- 1 copy is offline or indestructible
- 0 errors in backup
Ideally, the backup server does not run on the operating system used in the production environment and is not part of the productive Active Directory domain.
Access data required for backups should be managed by the backup software and not by the underlying operating system.
In order to have the best possible chance of being able to access the data in the event of an emergency, technologies such as immutable storage, WORM and / or tape should be used and the backup during transport AND storage should be secured through encryption and other ransom / malware protection technologies.
A second offsite replication of the backup with a completely separate security policy that is separated from the local network ensures that no data is lost even if the local network is taken over by attackers.
There are technical options to reduce the coupling of the systems to an absolute minimum in terms of time and thus make an attack on the replication side more difficult.
The best backup is of no use if it cannot be restored.
This needs to be checked regularly.
However, many companies lack the infrastructure to carry out such a test.
Make sure that the backups are actually ready to be used in an emergency.
This can only be done by regularly testing a disaster where recovery starts from scratch.
Even if you don’t plan to get ISO 27001 certification:
Create documentation about your backup and especially about your disaster recovery.
In an emergency, everything has to happen quickly and not all of the necessary employees are always on site.
Even when creating the documentation, you often find errors in the existing planning, which is why it needs to be checked regularly.
In an emergency, the documentation helps to restore everything in the correct order without introducing further delays due to errors.
You should also make this documentation available in case of an emergency, as it is stored on the encrypted file server and is useless.
For years, courts have viewed it as a fundamental obligation of a company to implement a modern backup strategy.
Most insurance companies require the “state of the art” as a prerequisite in order to provide protection.
If you neglect your backup, you will have a lot more problems in an emergency.
Use the food for thought, because some things can be improved with little effort.
Good luck!
What is important is the freedom in the knowledge that all you wish to preserve is safe.
To move ahead in life, sometimes we need to back up.
Sources
- Wikipedia
- “World Backup Day is here“, Cohen Coberly, Techspot, 31 March 2022
- “Backup? Aber sicher!“, Marco Rompf, Cyber Security Cluster Bonn, 31 March 2022
- “World Backup Day highlights the importance of keeping your data safe“, Ian Barker, Beta News, 31 March 2022
- “World Backup Day highlights the importance of protecting data“, Dan Misener, CBC, 31 March 2022
- “Guess What? Today is World Backup Day“, Lou Covey, Crucial Tech, 31 March 2022, Apple podcast