31st March 2016 By Phil Muncaster
Industry experts have been urging businesses to use World Backup Day today to rethink how they can better protect their most valuable assets, especially in light of the ransomware epidemic sweeping the globe.
The annual global awareness raising campaign, which describes itself as an “independent initiative,” quotes 2013 figures from backup and storage firm Backblaze on its homepage claiming that 29% of users have never backed up their data, although this is a US-centric study and mainly consumer-focused.
Among organizations too there are still lessons to be learned, according to Rackspace director of technical services, Giri Fox.
Full Article
World Backup Day Returns as Ransomware Epidemic Bites
"Think Tanks" as the expression goes needs to dig deep into this issue about ransonware and where to go has to be addressed. This is surely a battle.
+34World Backup Day is an excellent idea and the survey illustrates the need for greater awareness.
At the consumer and small business level, many users back up to an external hard drive that they leave permanently connected to their PC. This is very dangerous since, with the rise of ransomware, a malicious program would encrypt the files in the attached drive as well as the internal one. Unless you keep an air gap, you are not safe from ransomware although you are of course protected from an internal hard drive failure.
Nemo
At the consumer and small business level, many users back up to an external hard drive that they leave permanently connected to their PC. This is very dangerous since, with the rise of ransomware, a malicious program would encrypt the files in the attached drive as well as the internal one. Unless you keep an air gap, you are not safe from ransomware although you are of course protected from an internal hard drive failure.
Nemo
+56World Backup Day was how I found out about BackBlaze, which I use at home.
One important thing to do on World Backup Day is to actually test your backups to make sure you can restore them!
One important thing to do on World Backup Day is to actually test your backups to make sure you can restore them!
Perhaps that should be 'World Back Up AND Air Gap' day, as the latest versions of ransomware are becoming significantly more intelligent at looking for, finding and encrypting backups on external hard drives that are left connected. :(
Webroot SecureAnywhere Complete Beta Tester v9.0.24.49, imaged by Macrium Reflect v7.2
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