The World Backup Day

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March 31 – for some of us it’s just another ordinary day, for others a day to celebrate one’s birthday, and for another it’s an occasion to celebrate the World Pudding Day. However, in our IT industry, this day is a reminder of something that is better not to forget as the consequences can be catastrophic – the World Backup Day.

Launched in 2011, the World Backup Day had a humorous subtext, because it concerned the protection of all data against the consequences of the possible consequences of the next day, known to everyone as April Fool’s Day. Whether in the private or business sphere, any loss of data is not desirable. Therefore, the World Backup Day is no longer just an invention of Maxtor employees (now Seagate), and has become an ideal opportunity to verify the condition of your backups or simply an inspiration to start the archiving of data stored in digital form.

According to various studies, we lose up to 200 thousand phones per year as a result of theft. At the same time, 10% of computers are infected, and 30% of users accidentally delete data. In each of these cases, a large percentage is loss of irreversible data: photos, videos, documents, and even databases.

In private life, we most often store such sensitive data as images in photos, bank details, text documents or scans of contracts. Losing some of them is not a big problem, but you have to admit that photos or films are souvenirs for life and it would be a sad to lose them all. Of course, there is no need to overdo it and suddenly decide on very expensive solutions. The most important thing is that the data is on at least two different media. It is worth getting, for example, an external drive or access to a cloud service where such data will be stored. Good drive costs from PLN 250 per 1TB of capacity – it should easily last for several years. Most of us have access to the so-called “cloud”, sometimes without realizing it. This is nothing more than 15 GB of capacity on a Google drive (connected to our e-mail box) or the OneDrive service provided as part of the Office package (depending on the package from 5 GB to 1 TB). For the more advanced, there are additional solutions, such as matrices, but here you have to take into account the cost of a minimum of PLN 1,000.

Data held by companies is a heavier caliber. Their loss may lead to the collapse of the enterprise. You should remember about a few important rules that will allow you to apply the so-called disaster recovery.

The first thing is to use the 3-2-1 rule, under which data is stored in three pieces (one original, two copies), on two types of media (matrix, local disk), one of which is off-site (e.g., in cloud).

The second rule is to have policies and procedures to resume or maintain all infrastructure. This is necessary in order to restore full operation of the company in the event of data loss without chaos and in a safe manner. Depending on the size of the organization, the efficient launch of the procedure protects the company from losses of several thousand, and often even several million.

The third point is awareness. Employees should use the resources made available to them with caution – so that there is no need to run the above-mentioned procedures. Sometimes it’s just worth asking if any data can be deleted.

One thing is certain – companies should not save on backup solutions. Thanks to qualified employees, efficient software and appropriate equipment, no failure will be terrible and will not entail financial losses.

You can write for a long time about backups. Each administrator has his own vision of data storage. What they all have in common are downright pedantic safeguards. However, you do not have to be an administrator to take care of your data, so we encourage everyone to spend some time, organize and secure them properly. And if March 31 is not a Backup Day for you and for some reason you are not worried about data loss, we wish you a tasty Pudding Day 🙂

This post is also available in: Polski (Polish)