World Backup Day

Date: 2022-03-31
Author: Gabriela Peralta, Marketing and Public Relations Coordinator

For many companies and organizations, there are those behind the scenes saving our data while we work away. For startups and small businesses, there might be one person in charge of IT, if there is someone. The fact that World Backup Day exists is a testament that most of us, non-techies, are mostly unaware of the risks and threats that lie outside our firewalls and authentication methods. Working at a cybersecurity company, however, most of our employees are aware and appreciate those who are in charge of the backup infrastructure in place.

Something I’ve learnt since being at our company is that cloud file storage is not a backup in itself for organizations, as it can be for individuals. There exist backup companies that offer data storage that can be used for storing a redundant copy of cloud files. For individuals, however, who store their files on their local drive, they can use cloud storage to save their important files should something happen to their devices. Something else I’ve learnt is data backup environments must be tested to prove data can be restored successfully.

We want to honor world backup day and create awareness for something so simple yet essential in our lives. Let’s make an inventory of the essential items we own digitally. It could be our resume, nobody likes rewriting those if they’re lost, pictures of family members, travel photographs, music collections, maybe even a memoir or journal entry, you might have a copy of your ID/driver’s license and passport too.

There are many different ways our digital information could be lost forever, if not backed up. We can damage our devices accidentally with liquid spills, become victims of physical/virtual thieves or a computer virus.

If you are an IT professional or owner of a small business, you should have more urgency to the matter. Our fearless IT Leader here at Versasec reminds us: “Backup is crucial as losing data can bring your business to a halt. Also backups are important as a mitigation to ransomware. You can then recover your ransomed content from backup and recover from the attack.“

So, I ask you, is your information backed up? And more importantly, how secure is your backup?

Backup is important for every area of a business.
Here are a few Versasec superstars sharing how backup is relevant to their work area.

“With all cloud based services hosting and running our data and applications, backups are critical, or functions, like our accounting, payments could stop working in case of a loss in a vendor’s databases.”

“It’s industry standard to have a backup and a redundant backup. I do this on all of my personal data and important work data. I like to hold a backup in the cloud and a backup locally on an external SSD. Backups help prevent losing all work and are crucial for normal business to continue when life inevitably happens.”

“There are many company key documents that we need to keep, as well as company history. It would be chaos if some of them wouldn’t be available. That said, we live in a modern era where most of the information is online. Working in the cybersecurity sector we look at companies that will store our data with a critical eye.”

“It is a plan B provision should you risk all your data stored at your work laptop, cloud drive is an awesome option for work files backup.”

Make a plan!
If you have thought of some items that you need to back up, try to get to it today or tomorrow, while it’s fresh in your mind. Make it practical and easy. If something is really complicated, you probably won’t use it nor be able to restore your data. Consider helping people around you, to help them as well backup their data!

If you’re a small business owner, or IT professional, you should probably get to it today, as soon as possible. Make sure you have two sets of backups, in different locations or types (redundant data). If you use a cloud service for your files, make sure you have a backup of these files as well. Finally, run a simulation and see if you can successfully recover your data from the backed up files.

Happy backup day!