World Backup Day 2024 is coming up on March 31.
Founded in 2011 by Ismail Jadun, a digital strategy and research consultant, World Backup Day is an annual event aimed at raising awareness about the importance of regularly backing up personal and professional data to prevent data loss. The day encourages individuals and businesses to take the pledge to secure their data by creating copies in different locations, ensuring that important information is protected against unforeseen events.
Several industry experts spoke about this important day:
Carl D’Halluin, CTO, Datadobi
“This World Backup Day, I want to remind everyone that protecting your data with backups isn’t just a technical formality. Given the virtually unavoidable risks of ransomware, malicious or accidental deletions, and countless other threats – it’s absolutely crucial for the health of your business.
“The first step? Get your arms around your data. You cannot protect it, if you do not know what you have. Then…
“A well-thought-out and tested data backup strategy, together with a combination of robust data security and management solutions, can significantly enhance operations resilience. Add to that the crucial but sometimes missed step of a “golden copy” (i.e., an immutable copy of your business-critical data in a secure and remote site) and your business will be protected today, as well as ideally positioned to support business continuity well into the future.”
Oleksandr Maidaniuk, VP of technology, Intellias
“Data is the virtual lifeblood of today’s organizations, so as World Backup Day 2024 rolls around, we need to appreciate how crucial regular data backups are for keeping our businesses running without interruption, even in the face of a simple outage or a manmade or natural disaster.
“Of course, implementing a seamless backup and disaster recovery (DR) strategy is easier said than done, due to the complicated interplay of technological, regulatory, and operational factors. The heterogeneous nature of data and technology platforms and the increasingly complicated and stringent compliance mandates combined with the need to minimize – if not eliminate – downtime requires a nuanced approach.
“At the end of the day, it all boils down to knowing how to strike the perfect balance between protecting all our data thoroughly and using our resources wisely. This way, we can get back on our feet fast after any setback without disturbing our daily work. Savvy folks in data management understand that if we don’t have this kind of know-how already in our team, we might need to team up with a reliable partner. This partner should be all about giving businesses the latest, customized backup solutions that do more than just keep data safe; they should fit exactly with what we need and want to achieve. The ideal partner will be just that – a partner that acts as an extension of your internal capabilities – enabling you to leverage advanced technologies like cloud storage, automation, and AI and in doing so, enhance the resilience of your businesses, making data protection seamless and reliable. On World Backup Day and every day, let’s pledge to prioritize backup, DR, and business continuity to ensure our data remains safe, our operations resilient, and our future secure.”
Neil Jones, director of cybersecurity evangelism, of Egnyte
“World Backup Day reminds us that data protection is only as good as your organization’s level of cybersecurity preparedness. With more than $1 billion paid in global ransom payments in 2023, data backups have become mission-critical as organizations seek to recover from ransomware attacks (and other debilitating cyberattacks) in days or hours rather than weeks or months.
“The best advice I can offer is that organizations must take their Incident Response (IR) programs seriously, and a viable Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plan needs to be a vital component of that larger IR program. Here’s why: In the event of a significant cyberattack, users can’t stay productive without just-in-time access to their data, and even minutes or hours of data interruption can have a major impact on employees’ productivity and a company’s bottom line. In addition to protecting themselves against cyberattacks, companies struggle to manage the vast amounts of data they generate in today’s AI-driven work environment while adapting to global data privacy regulations that are changing frequently. As a result, it is extremely important to test your company’s backup environment regularly before a potential cyberattack, technical malfunction, or employee error that could make your data inaccessible.
“On World Backup Day, I’m reminded that simple, inexpensive approaches like implementing effective data protection procedures, reducing data sprawl, and restricting users’ access to information on a ‘business need to know’ basis can majorly impact data security now and in the future. Another proven- and inexpensive- approach is encouraging users to take proactive steps to back up their organizational data and to “say something if they see something” unusual in their everyday IT environments.”
Bin Fan, chief architect and VP of open source, Alluxio
“Every year, the amount of data we produce increases significantly. World Backup Day is a call to action, urging us to reconsider our strategies for simplifying backup and recovery to keep pace with the significant increase in data production each year.
“As we scale the data storage, timely data movement is a necessity, whether for archiving data in more economical storage or for duplicating data to another center as part of a disaster recovery plan. However, this process can be complex and operational-heavy. We should keep optimizing and streamlining data movement across multiple storage systems.
“On this World Backup Day, let’s commit to exploring more efficient and effective ways to protect and manage our growing data, ensuring we’re prepared for any unforeseen circumstances that may arise.”
Kevin Cole, director, product and technical marketing, data protection at Zerto, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company
“World Backup Day is a welcome chance to remind ourselves of the importance of protecting our data and ensuring its availability. As the old saying goes: the best time to put in place a modern data protection strategy was yesterday; the second-best time is today.
“However, for most people there’s a simple reality: backup is boring. It doesn’t get the same hype as the latest trends in IT, whether artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, or Web 3.0. It can be hard to get attention for a computing practice that dates many decades.
“Yet backup remains more relevant than ever thanks to the explosive growth in data, distributed from edge to cloud, and an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. Backup is still one of the foundational pillars in data protection alongside disaster recovery, archive, and cyber recovery. This World Backup Day, make it a priority to double-check your backup plans and ensure end-to-end protection across the data lifecycle. It may not have the headline-grabbing power of IT’s latest bleeding edge innovations, but backup is one of the most critical tools in any organization’s efforts to minimize data loss and take control of the data deluge.”
Niel Pandya, APAC & Japan CTO at OpenText Cybersecurity
“Many aspects influence backup and recovery strategies, including understanding data, IT visibility, and awareness of business costs during downtime. Recently, while assisting an APAC client, we encountered challenges with their backup tool due to incomplete system scoping and inefficient usage. Manual checks on 200 systems underscored the need for prioritization and automation. It’s crucial to prioritize critical systems for backup and recovery, aligning with the business’s recovery time objectives. Notably, a major bank in Singapore faced penalties due to system outages, underscoring the significance of system availability. Various threats, such as ransomware attacks and natural disasters, highlight the need for preparedness in data recovery. Understanding data sensitivity aids in implementing appropriate backup measures, including data discovery to reduce the data footprint, comply with regulations, and expedite backups and restores.”
Greg Clark, director, OpenText Cybersecurity
“When World Backup Day was created in 2011, 1.8 zettabytes of data existed across the globe. By 2020, that number increased nearly 200%. While data backup remains an essential cybersecurity layer, the data landscape continues to grow exponentially. Technology like cloud and AI are rapidly increasing data creation and usage. This means organizations must alter how they think about data, including what information is preserved. World Backup Day is the prime moment for initiating this change.
“Backups are required for businesses to be responsive and nimble in the event of a ransomware attack or disaster. However, they should not be done blindly. Otherwise, resources and bandwidth will become overwhelmed; an organization also puts itself at compliance risk. In today’s data-rich environments, data discovery and protection are key to understanding data and its risk level.
“By prioritizing data privacy and hygiene, organizations can elevate their security posture by going beyond information preservation and disaster recovery. Data analysis, for example, can identify data redundancies and inefficiencies, decreasing the overall amount of data that needs to be preserved and reducing an organization’s data footprint. Privacy-enhancing technologies take this a step further, helping to minimize data usage while also encouraging sustainability, ethical information use and ensuring regulatory and auditory compliance. Technologies like data masking, tokenization and encryption can also protect the privacy of individuals and secure critical information while preventing the over-retention of data. Coupling data hygiene with privacy-enhancing technologies like these can allow an organization to preserve only the necessary data. As a result, they can reduce data backup spend and more effectively implement security measures, such as encryption and access controls, to protect the remaining sensitive information.”
Ratan Tipirneni, president and CEO at Tigera
“The rapid pace of digital transformation continues to create new opportunities–and threats–for today’s organizations. The increasing availability of Ransomware-as-a-Service, a model which offers bad actors sophisticated vulnerability distribution while simultaneously isolating them from the risks of the trade, will lead to a worsening security situation for unprepared enterprises. This World Backup Day, enterprises and small businesses alike must remember that security is not a one-time effort; it’s an ongoing process that organizations of all sizes must prioritize. As the threat landscape changes and evolves, businesses must constantly re-evaluate and adapt their security measures to stay ahead of potential threats, prioritizing key best practices like regularly backing up data.”
Narayana Pappu, CEO at Zendata
“With average data generation growing at 24.1% annually, organizations are spending more money year-over-year on storage, computing, and backup. Privacy regulations that mandate organizations to allow data deletion or portability only increase complexity by requiring organizations to keep multiple copies of information by user case. For example, a fintech company might allow users to delete their information and close their accounts, but they might have to keep a copy of the information for compliance and regulatory requirements. Organizations can save significant spend (a typical enterprise spends more than $10 million on backups) by using AI-enabled automation to evaluate the quality of information they are backing up, remove duplication, and ensure recovery of the most valuable data quickly in case there is an incident.”
Matthieu Chan Tsin, vice president – head of cybersecurity services at Cowbell
“In today’s evolving cyber threat landscape, cyberattack techniques and tactics are more sophisticated than ever before. Companies are no longer asking themselves “if” they’ll be attacked, but “when”, and must focus on ways to mitigate the impact of a compromise. While data backups may seem simple, they are a fundamental component of comprehensive risk management and incident response strategies.
“This World Backup Day, organizations should recognize the impact backups can have on:
- Data recovery: Enterprises have access to valuable data, making them extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks. Regular backups serve as a way to restore systems following a compromise or internal failure. In case of an attack, backups can help minimize downtime when trying to recover data, ultimately reducing the impact of an attack.
- Ransomware Mitigation: Ransomware attacks are detrimental to organizations since their internal networks are compromised, and they often have to pay hefty sums to recover them. By gaining access to and extracting the most valuable information, threat actors can command higher prices for the organization’s most sensitive data. Having up-to-date backups enables cybersecurity professionals to recover data and files, avoiding giving into ransom demands.
“By prioritizing backup solutions and practices, enterprises can enhance their resilience against cyber threats and mitigate the impact of attacks on their operations.”
Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder at Keeper Security
“Ransomware is among the most common cyber attack vectors globally, according to a recent Keeper® survey of IT and security leaders. As attacks continue increasing in volume and severity, regularly backing up data to the cloud can help both enterprises and small businesses protect and restore data without having to pay a cent of ransom. Adoption of a zero-knowledge, zero-trust solution can help simplify protecting cloud backups and have the added benefit of mitigating the impact of ransomware attacks. A zero-trust security model with least privileged access and strong data backups will limit the blast radius in the event that a cyber attack does occur.
“World Backup Day reminds us that despite the growing number of sophisticated malicious actors and the ever-evolving threat landscape, strategic solution adoption and following simple best practices can protect organizations against devastating cyber incidents and mitigate the effect of a successful attack. Strong identity and access management at the front end will help prevent the most common cyber attacks that can lead to a disastrous data breach. A proactive cybersecurity strategy and prudent investment are crucial, because no organization is immune to attack.”
John Anthony Smith, founder and CSO at Conversant Group
“Business continuity and disaster recovery (BC/DR) is often top-of-mind for executives in mitigating risk to the business. Backups are arguably the top control in reducing the impact of the three major types of data loss events: Human error related, natural disasters, and the most destructive (but least considered) of them all: threat-actor-caused mass destruction events.
“The tactics and techniques of ransomware actors have always been rapidly evolving. However, in the past two years, we have seen an increase in the rate of evolution of the complexity, speed, sophistication, and aggressiveness of these crimes. Old approaches of being alerted to “security behaviors,” then researching and responding to those threats, no longer work because dwell time is too short, and attacks are fast, aggressive, and frequent.
“Few companies are adequately protecting their ability to restore their systems in case of a mass destruction event; and because breaches are more destructive than ever, ensuring that backups are immutable, redundant, resilient, and all pathways to them are secure and survivable is paramount. One challenge is that the definition of “immutable” varies by product manufacturer. Many do not offer true immutability (or, the inability to delete, alter, move, or destroy data unless preset, prewritten retention expiration times are satisfied). Even if a product is immutable, there must be proper security orchestration around these backups to ensure they are isolated from the network environment and that all access to them is appropriately restricted and secured.
“IT and security teams must encourage and enhance backup protocols when it comes to protecting the organization’s valuable data because once data is lost forever, many companies never recover. Security should work backwards in the breach progression. Threat actors work with the end goal of encrypting and destroying backups and production data in mind to leave organizations with few options; so security should begin by ensuring resilience. Once backups are secured against threat-actor-caused mass destruction events, the organization is also properly secured against human error and natural disaster scenarios, ensuring a stronger BC/DR stance.”
Glenn Gray, director of product marketing at Auvik
“IT teams face a daily onslaught of requests, tickets and other maintenance activities, and configuration backups are not always at the top of the list of priorities. However, network backups are imperative to business compliance, continuity and profitability. According to new data that will be published on April 4, there is a significant discrepancy between perceptions of the C-suite and IT technicians when it comes to network configuration backups. In a survey, C-suite respondents were more likely to report daily configuration backups (36%) compared to technicians (20%). The discrepancy indicates that either management is not aware of the real amount of work going into configuration management tasks, or technicians are simply too time-strapped and over-burdened to adhere to company policy when it comes to network backup frequency. The latter is highly likely, as another part of the research also indicated that configuration backups is one of the most commonly outsourced network related tasks/activities, with 42% of respondents indicating this is outsourced. Other parts of the research point to a lack of skilled workers and difficulties with hiring as a critical challenge facing IT teams this year leading to even more capacity issues.
“To stay on top of network backups and documentation, IT teams must look at automating these functions as much as possible. Investing in the right resources and tooling, such as the adoption of network management platforms with automation tools, can help ensure that organizations adhere to their security and compliance standards. By employing these automation tools, organizations can prevent overburdening their employees with menial but necessary tasks.”
Richard Sorosina, chief technical security officer at Qualys
“Performing regular and thorough backups is critical, and should definitely be a part of every organization’s cyber resilience strategy. That said, attackers are now aware that it is common practice to create backups and have adapted their tactics accordingly. Ransomware gangs no longer only target the big fish anymore. They are opportunistic attackers, looking for easy targets who will be most likely to pay up. That includes small-medium enterprises that will be more impacted by a breach, which is why it’s so important to measure, communicate and eliminate one’s cyber risk.
“This World Backup Day, it’s my hope that organizations will consider their holistic approach to security – starting with backing up their data, to reviewing their overall cyber hygiene and security posture to include simple steps that can help ensure their organization’s and customer’s data is safer and more secure.”
Roger Brulotte, CEO, Leaseweb Canada
“In today’s digital age, deploying infrastructure without robust backup protocols is a risky gamble. A staggering two-thirds of IT experts surveyed voiced concern over the ever-widening gap between exploding data growth and their organization’s ability to secure it. As data volumes surge, organizations need to recognize that data is an asset that demands adequate protection against various threats, including external attacks, hardware failures, and internal security vulnerabilities.
“Investing in comprehensive backup solutions is more than simply a precaution; it is a necessary step in ensuring the continuity and integrity of corporate operations. Organizations can minimize risks, increase resilience, and ensure the long-term sustainability of their businesses by prioritizing backup strategies and implementing effective data protection policies. In an era of increasing data breaches and cyber threats, proactive steps to secure infrastructure through backup solutions are crucial for mitigating future calamities and guaranteeing business continuity.”
Chris Denbigh-White, chief security officer at Next
“On World Backup Day, let us examine the security surrounding backups and the associated processes used in backing up data. While considerable emphasis is placed on encouraging organizations to back up data, the security of those backups can often be overlooked.
“We can all agree that administrative access should be controlled; however ‘domain admin’s’ cousin, ‘backup admin‘ is frequently overlooked. These accounts, by their inherent function, possess access to a vast array of data which they require for replication to backup locations. Do we have the same security measures around this type of access as we do for classic administrative access?
“The backups themselves inherently comprise a collection of data deemed valuable, all handily stored in one location. Are the access controls to these repositories of data commensurate with the value of the aggregated data stored within? How is access to these stores of data monitored, is it monitored??
“On this ‘World Backup Day,’ let us ensure that, in our endeavors to safeguard the visible frontiers of our organizations, we do not overlook the potential vulnerabilities arising from data exfiltration through the rear.
“Let’s back up but let’s also ensure that by doing so we are not presenting ‘pre-packaged data’ for an attacker to steal.”
Ken Claffey, CEO, Panasas
“World Backup Day serves as a timely reminder that traditional Backup/Recovery and Disaster Recovery strategies are no longer viable for Petascale workloads. As High-Performance Computing (HPC) takes center stage in solving complex problems across diverse sectors like manufacturing, healthcare, and finance, technology and user expectations have evolved. The rapid increase in Artificial Intelligence (AI) workloads also has increased the pressure on HPC computing infrastructure.
“A key part of the answer lies in the adoption of parallel file systems, built on software that allows simultaneous data access with the fast movement of petabytes of data, significantly accelerates backup and restore times—a critical factor when dealing with massive data volumes. Scalability, ease of use, cost efficiency and reliability are paramount, but employing advanced data protection mechanisms, such as erasure coding, enhances data integrity and availability, and keeps data safe today and every day of the year.”
