Back me up, buttercup.
That’s the message from IT experts for Monday, Mar. 31—it’s World Backup Day and that’s as good a reason as any to ensure your data is protected.
The unofficial digital holiday—which began in 2011 after a Reddit poster proposed “a day when everyone remembers to check that they have good backups of all their treasured data”—is a chance for IT teams to lock in their organizations and clients on the importance of protecting information.
Time and again. Backing up your information is more than just the smart thing to do for your peace of mind, it’s also a security concern. A Jan. 29 survey of consumers and IT professionals from backup software provider Veeam found that 48% of consumers reported data loss—and only 19% of them had backups. Veeam Senior Director of Product Strategy Rick Vanover told IT Brew that this means “one out of three photos gone of [your] kids, or one out of three lines of business gone in the enterprise.”
“That gets dangerous,” Vanover said.
Despite that, 76% of those surveyed said they believe their data will always be accessible. That’s a concern for Natasha Rabinov, director of strategic initiatives at storage firm Backblaze. Rabinov told IT Brew that Backblaze’s philosophy of backup security is supported by the Veeam survey numbers.
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“The computer is the first place that you need to back up from, and then after that you do need it from all of the locations,” Rabinov said. “Anywhere that you have original data, you need to back it up—anytime you move it to a different service, there’s a chance of data loss.”
Waiting. What’s important for IT teams, Vanover told IT Brew, is to “think about backup as an outcome, rather than an infrastructure.” That means relying on a diverse suite of options, including storage as a service, taking back time from “putting out fires.”
“As a service offerings are a very actionable way to get there,” Vanover said.
IT teams have a lot of options. In many cases, it comes down to making an economic argument: What’s the bottom line for the company? For Kari Rivas, a senior product marketing manager at Backblaze, the path forward is clear; it’s a question of where to allocate resources.
“Backup is often an item toward the lower portion of an IT director’s to-do list,” Rivas said. “One of the ways that we have been highlighting the importance of that is…tying the importance of backups to the fact that you’re protecting revenue-generating data.”