March 31st of every year is "World Backup Day", and it's to remind people of the importance of backups. To mark the day, a little kaleidoscope of information around this topic.
World Backup Day was created in 2011 by a group of Reddit users who were tired of constantly replying to Reddit threads like "I deleted my database and don't have a backup, please help me!". In addition to backup, the day also focuses on data hygiene – as a measure to better protect data during storage, use and transfer. Basically, it's about anything that reduces the risk of data loss, and increases the likelihood of successful recovery.
Did you backup today?
Unfortunately, many people only realize how important backups are when it is too late. Whether it's a hardware failure, a device loss or a hacker attack – vacation and family pictures on the cell phone or mail traffic and documents on the PC are irretrievably lost. "Regular backups are the only way to reliably protect your own data from various loss scenarios," says Markus Schaffrin, security expert and head of the Member Services division at German eco – Verband der Internetwirtschaft e. V. "The shorter the intervals between backups, the less data is lost if the worst comes to the worst." He recommends backing up important data at least weekly and doing so in two ways if possible, for example in the cloud and an external hard drive. Only a minority in Germany adhere to the above recommendations.
- Only one in five (20 percent) update their most important data weekly or more often.
- Only one in three in Germany (33.8 percent) updates at least monthly.
This is the result of a representative survey conducted by the opinion research company Civey on behalf of the eco association. For this purpose, the opinion research company Civey surveyed 2500 people between Feb. 15 and Feb. 16, 2023, on behalf of eco. There is also good news: 17.5 percent back up their data at least once or twice a year. Less frequently than once a year, 20.9 percent back up their data, and 15.7 percent even say they never back up. That's even more than four years ago. In 2019, in a similar survey, 10.6 percent said they never back up.
eco expert Markus Schaffrin gives the following tips for automated backup, which I consider to be mostly truisms – the normal user does not have these options. Here are the expert's theses – check for yourself whether they are viable for you on an ad-hoc basis.
- Cloud backup solution allow you to back up data automatically. Some popular options are Google Drive, iCloud, Dropbox and OneDrive. Many cell phone manufacturers also offer their own apps to store the data of one's smartphone or pictures online encrypted in the cloud.
- Those who prefer to back up data locally can use an external hard drive. Data can be backed up manually or automatically at least once a week using Windows Backup (PC) or Time Machine (Mac). There is also a wide range of backup software that can create and manage backups automatically.
- If there is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) system in the household, then data can also be backed up there automatically. A NAS is a device that is connected to the network and serves as a central storage location for data.
The eco association recommends the safest option, a combination of cloud backup and external hard drive or NAS, to back up data to multiple locations. Go for this double backup option for important data and ensure updates at least once a week via both methods. The points read a bit like cloud cuckoo land to me – quickly back up everything to the cloud, smartphone via app, or fire up Windows Backup (where can I find this feature).
