There's a "DAY" for almost anything these days, but here's one that should be on your calendar - World Backup day,
March 31, 2019. Whether its personal or business, here's a great
reminder for you to celebrate awareness around having a backup and
recovery strategy.
What is World Backup Day?
World Backup Day
started in 2011 and is a day about backup awareness and getting people to start
backing up their computers and data if they aren't already doing so. For those that do, it's a time of year to
remind them to make sure they've validated that their backup strategy is up to
speed and effective. World Backup Day was chosen to be the day before
April 1st (April Fools) in order to drive the message home.
We all know someone who has been affected by data loss. Hopefully this
day will make
everyone think twice about their situation, and educate themselves on
the various options available to them so that they can get things backed
up.
Every
day, people and businesses lose valuable data and information because
they fail
to follow a simple backup procedure. And
that data continues to explode! People now create
and generate over 1.8 zettabytes of data per year. Seriously, that's a
lot of data needing protection! Unfortunately, nearly 30% of people
have
never even backed up their data.
You could
be affected in a number of ways, including:
-
Hardware Failures - This is the leading cause of data loss. Ever read up on the MTBF of each of your
devices? Yes, hardware will crash and
burn. Be ready!
-
Cyber Attacks - In 2018, you're going to continue to read more and
more about cyber attacks. Don't be a
victim. Have a plan at the ready.
-
Natural Disasters - Think a natural disaster won't affect you? It
can, and for businesses, it can be devastating. According to the
National Archives &
Records Administration in Washington, 93% of companies that lost their
data
center for 10 days or more due to a natural disaster ended up filing for
bankruptcy within one year later.
-
Human Error - Oh yeah, mistakes happen. And when human beings are involved, the old saying
of what can go wrong, will go wrong is common.
A backup is only as good as your ability to recover the data. As part of your backup strategy, make sure to
have a recovery plan. Be prepared to recover an entire system, a folder or collection of folders, and a
single file. World
Backup Day should bring about awareness and create a reminder for all of us to
backup things up. No matter how secure or
safe you feel about your data, know that it's important to backup your files.
Don't
take my word for it. Hear from some of
the experts in the backup and disaster recovery industry for more commentary:
--
"This day recognizes the
growing significance of protecting data across different platforms and the need
for regular backups. Data threats like malware attack, system crash and many
others continue to be prominent threats that impact to 40% of critical IT failures
in businesses. To be able to store data across on-site, off-site and cloud
premises with the critical servers enabled for High Availability is the need of
the hour these days. We at Vembu have always listened to our customers- IT
admins and stakeholders alike to understand what's critical to put their data
centers at the heart of business operations. That's how Vembu BDR Suite was
designed and built- a single solution to protect the virtual, physical and
cloud platforms, thereby simplifying complex data management to a single
window! Keep inspiring and help Vembu build a robust yet simple Backup &
Disaster Recovery solution for a progressive enterprise here." - Nagarajan
Chandrasekaran, Vice President, Product Management, Vembu
--
"There
is no 'one size fits all' when it comes to backup and businesses need to take a
smarter approach.
Customers
and employees continue to demand seamless access to data, and internal
stakeholders want the business to achieve this while being cost-conscious. Therefore,
businesses need to take a long hard look at their current backup strategy and
decide whether it can not only ensure the level of service internally and
externally in the event of a disaster, but that it is as streamlined as
possible and able to keep up with the scale of growing data volumes. If
businesses take one thing into consideration this World Backup Day, it should
be a fundamental switch in thinking. Don't view backup as an afterthought.
Build comprehensive data protection into every new development in the business.
This concept of data protection by design is far
more than simply a ‘nice to have', it's a ‘must have' and a fundamental
stipulation of the EU GDPR. The GDPR is also famously broad when it comes to
the definition of a data breach, including any incident which affects the
availability of personal data; incidents which can be mitigated by a robust
backup and recovery strategy. With data holding so much value to businesses and
individuals alike, the way it is handled can make or break an organization in
2019." - Adrian
Moir, Lead Technology Evangelist for Quest Software's Data Protection business
unit
--
"World Backup Day of April 1 is the challenge to not be fooled any day of the year. At Veeam, we take backup seriously to give organizations the Availability they want and need in today’s world. Timeless advice still prevails to have offline or air-gapped storage for backup data to be resilient against ransomware and other threats. Forward-looking, as organizations consume more cloud services, backup and data management become more important than ever." - Rick Vanover, Sr. Director, Product Strategy at Veeam
--
"Since last year’s World Backup Day, enterprises have had to take a more strategic approach to cloud backup and recovery. As more companies become attracted to the benefits of public cloud environments, we’ve seen many poorly managed migrations that have resulted in overblown budgets. To reel in escalating costs, companies are thinking more critically about where they store and backup their workloads and applications. Many have found that a hybrid approach can allow them to take advantage of the scalability and agility of the cloud, while also being able to quickly restore data stored on-prem because of reduced network latency. There will surely be more education around hybrid backup and disaster recovery in the year to come, especially as companies are trying to prevent data loss in their increasingly complex, multi-generational IT environments." - Oussama El-Hilali, CTO at Arcserve
--
"The value of collecting and preserving files goes beyond traditional backup needs. It’s not just about recovering a file that was lost, or even recovering from a ransomware attack. Organizations need to think more broadly about having visibility into where their valuable data, such as intellectual property, and employee and customer data, lives, how it moves and which of their data is at risk. A core element of a holistic data security strategy assumes all data is important and as a result every version of every file is collected and preserved at scale. When approaching data security holistically and retaining every file, security practitioners can gain the insight they need to answer some of the larger unknowns about their data, like: Where is my data? Who has copies of my data? How can I monitor when data is leaving my organization? How do I know what data is leaving my organization, or what important information was on that laptop that was lost at the airport? The bottom line is companies really need to know how to protect their data, not just back it up." - Vijay Ramanathan, SVP Product Management, Code42
--
"A ransomware attack can strike at any time. World Backup Day is an opportunity to recognize the importance of being proactive in defending
your data against this malicious software. Organizations must develop a detailed backup strategy, but proper backup alone is not enough.
Enterprises need advanced storage solutions that
can protect your assets from ransomware when cybersecurity measures
fail. Object storage protects data where it resides, with technologies
such as versioning and WORM. These ensure an unharmed set of data is
available in the event of an attack, allowing users to easily replace
damaged files. Write Once Read Many (WORM) technology, in particular,
makes data unchangeable, preventing malware from encrypting data
and locking users out. WORM protects data at the backup target layer,
and ensures that sensitive data is
not put in jeopardy." -
Jon Toor, CMO, Cloudian
--
"New Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), dynamic indexing, scale-out infrastructure and cloud technologies are increasingly making it possible for IT professionals simplify backup, even in complex hybrid multicloud environments. From AI-powered self-driving backup that automates data protection care and feeding tasks, to scale-out backup appliances you can just plug-in as your data backup needs expand, there is no reason for any enterprise to work hard at backup any more. The same system can also provide data activation solutions that streamline data privacy and governance, while expanding the business value of data, so there is no reason for IT professionals to be pulling their hair out over data protection. This is super-important given today’s tight market for storage, backup and other IT talent, in a world where having a complete, simplified data recovery readiness strategy is an absolute necessity. Like the Avengers, the chances of you finding up to half of your team gone (leaving for more attractive job, not disappeared by a mad Titan snapping his fingers, thank goodness) is very real. However, with a complete, simplified recovery readiness strategy in place, you can continue to protect your enterprise’s critical data with a smaller team – though it’s probably still best not to ask them to seize the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos." – Nigel Tozer, Director of Solutions Marketing, Commvault
"On this World Backup Day, IT professionals might want to be aware that chances are they are “not as protected as they think they are.” Just because they have planned and set Service Levels (SLAs) doesn’t mean they are actually meeting them as planned. To make sure protection expectations equal reality, they should follow these three key backup commandments: 1) If you don’t know what it is, back it up. 2) If you don’t know if you’ll need it, back it up. And 3) If you know what it is and understand its value to you and/or your business, back it up. Backing up growing amounts of data from an ever-increasing number of clouds and other infrastructure might seem complex and intimidating, but today’s data management and protection technologies can make it easier than you think." – Matt Tyrer, Senior Solutions Marketing, Commvault
"World Backup Day is a great time to celebrate what you’re doing to protect your enterprise’s data today – and plan for how you will continue to protect it in the future. Planning is important as tomorrow’s backups may look very different than the backups you are doing today. Unforeseen or unexpected business changes – M&As that bring in new types of IT infrastructure or much larger amounts of critical data to protect, or new corporate leadership demanding implementation of cloud-first IT strategies – might require you to radically change your data protection strategy. While your data protection strategy might seem robust on this World Backup Day, if it does not provide you with the flexibility to burst to the cloud, scale resources, and recover data to and from a variety of on-premises and cloud locations, you might find it lacking when World Backup Day 2020 arrives next year." – Penny Gralewski, Principal of Solutions Marketing, Commvault
"On this World Backup Day it is hard to not think of the recent day-long outage that hit Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram – and the millions of people directly affected by it. This outage underscored our growing reliance on data in our lives. In this case, much of the data might be considered as non-essential, but what if it were all wiped-out, and years’ worth of family pictures and videos and communication with friends and family were gone for good? Every day, we use devices that generate tons of data, from our smart phones and our laptops to our automobiles, entertainment devices and even smart homes. And let’s not forget the data found in our financial and health records. As technology plays an increasingly direct role in our daily lives, our reliance on it, and the data it generates, has become more critical than ever before. The cloud and other new technologies have given us the means to scale the infrastructure required to store all this data, but the challenge of protecting it, managing it, and using it has become more complicated than ever before. But it’s a challenge to which we must rise, because our reliance on this data grows with each passing day." - David Orban, Senior Manager, Solutions Marketing, Commvault
--
"Although many people assume backup only relates to servers, backup and recovery practices span every portion of IT. Backups are the fail-safe of every IT employee, period. Take email archives, for example. The value of a backup increases when a tech pro is dealing with a disaster or other urgent matter, as time is always of the essence in recovery. Having on-premises and\or off-premises backups is vital, so tech pros can recover quickly and with integrity. This stems from the ARRR (availability, reliability, resiliency, and recoverability) pillars, which allow all IT to have data and application goals for recovery and stability. I like to use the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of the data; two different storage mediums/devices; and one copy offsite. In honor of this holiday, my top tip is to make sure that backups are running and accessible. Happy World Backup Day!" - Destiny Bertucci, Head Geek, SolarWinds
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“While World Backup Day does mark an occasion and a reminder for all of us to go make sure our backups are working and recoverable, we all know that backup (and recovery) is a year-round job. For many admins keeping tabs on their backups is difficult with all the other work to be done on a day to day basis. Maintaining backups for a whole year shouldn’t be a difficult task, and here at Altaro we don’t believe it should be. We know that something as critical as data protection should be easy to do, because easy tasks have a way of becoming habit. When you stop to consider your backups on this year’s World Backup Day, consider how easy (or difficult) your existing solution is to maintain, and think about making a change for the better. You’ll thank yourself, and your data will too.” - Andy Syrewicze, Technical Evangelist at Altaro Software
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"World Backup Day is an annual reminder to evaluate your current backup, disaster recovery and security processes. We live in a world where business and consumers expect 24x7x365 access to critical IT systems. The cost of data loss and system downtime can include financial losses, lost opportunities, damaged reputations and in some cases even endanger lives. Unfortunately, the threat landscape continues to evolve so diligence is required to make sure we are always protected from all sources of potential downtime including infrastructure failures, human error, natural disaster, ransomware and malware attacks. March 31st is the perfect time to make sure that your existing backup and DR solutions are meeting your needs for all your workloads and that you have successful validated their effectiveness via regular testing." - Dave LeClair, Sr. Director of Product Management for BDR, Continuum
--
"Organizations should consider all aspects of the backup strategy, including non-traditional backup functionality provided as part of other solutions, such as security and compliance solutions.
Many security solutions, such as email threat protection solutions, also provide business continuity that provides a backup for email that can be leveraged in case of a down mail server. Generally, the solutions allow access to about 30 days of email communication and will queue up any new incoming emails until the mail server becomes available again. Users can easily read emails, reply forward and even compose new emails. When the email server becomes available again, the business continuity service will sync with the mail server to ensure a smooth transition for the user.
Archiving solutions also typically provide the ability for users to access emails that may no longer be available in the mail server. The archive becomes an easily accessed backup of user emails that the user can access without having to store large volumes of email on the overloaded mail server. Many archiving solutions provide for unlimited or at least several years of email storage and provide much more advanced search capabilities than what users have in their email system." - Dena Bauckman, Director of Product Management, Zix
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"World Backup Day is a great reminder for companies large and small to not only make sure to determine which data to back up, but also where to back it up. As we’ve seen this year with a scary amount of natural disasters, major floods, fires, or tornados can physically wipe out a business – taking all that critical data with it. Because of this, building a multi-site or cloud back up architecture can literally determine the difference between the success or failure of your organization. Today’s businesses generate mountains of data at a pace that is only accelerating. The digital universe more than doubles every two years, and will balloon to 44 trillion gigabytes in 2020 from 4.4 trillion gigabytes in 2013. That’s an astounding amount of data that must be backed up and protected in case of hardware/software failure, malicious actors, human error, or natural disasters. Companies of all sizes from small businesses to large enterprises need to have a backup strategy that can keep up with this data explosion and sustain any kind of disruption." - Angela Restani, VP of Marketing at Hedvig
--
"Securely storing and backing up data has never been more critical. Not only are we collecting exponentially more data, but due to stringent compliance and regulations like GDPR, the way that data is managed and handled is under greater scrutiny than ever before. Despite businesses understanding the importance of backing up data, their data management continues to be extremely fragmented, with 79% of businesses using at least three or more backup solutions.
What’s clear is that although businesses are beginning to recognize the advantages of cloud-based backup over traditional hardware and software , the fact remains that if your organization is still using external hard drive as a backup, it’s at considerable risk. Cloud-based backup can provide a holistic approach to an organization’s data and offer visibility not possible with traditional architecture. It provides an immediate solution for data recovery, removing the management issues of storing data in offsite locations, hiring specialist resources and the continuous heavy investment in additional storage.
Businesses need additional assurance for the management and protection of their data. Backing up to the cloud is more secure, faster, easier, and cheaper than the alternatives. At Druva, we see more than 3.5 million backups every single day - it’s clear the future of backup is in the cloud." - W. Curtis Preston, Chief Technologist, Druva
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