A few months ago, a popular cybersecurity news organization posted an urgent notice on social media seeking help to recover their data after their blog was deleted.  They announced that they had no backups and they were desperately trying to contact the site administrator to restore their blog collection.  This was as maddening as it was embarrassing for the same reasons.  One would think that a cybersecurity organization would exemplify good backup habits, or that a news organization of any type would practice good backup procedures.  One would assume that an admission of such negligence would be kept out of the public spotlight. 

There was no legal requirement to announce the data loss, since it was not the result of a breach, or any malicious act involving any sensitive data.  It was simply an error by the web site operator, either through an automated process, or a manual blunder.  Either way, the admission that they did not have backups did nothing to help promote security in any way. 

The General State of Affairs Gives No Comfort

This event made me wonder about the general state of backups.  I wondered whether the average person practices good backup habits, so I started to ask around.  I figured that I would be bored with the responses, since I am such a backup evangelist.  I make multiple backups of my important data, and I go so far as to wear an encrypted copy on a USB drive that is with me at all times.  You would not be the first person to call me weird for doing so.  It only gets weird when I tell people that the USB is fully bootable, so I don’t have to rely on anyone else’s (Read more...)