{"id":5349,"date":"2020-03-31T10:38:56","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T14:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thinknts.com\/?p=5349"},"modified":"2020-03-31T10:38:56","modified_gmt":"2020-03-31T14:38:56","slug":"backup-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/backup-day\/","title":{"rendered":"World Backup Day – March 31st"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"by<\/span> Paul Ducklin<\/p>\n

Today is, wait for it, drum roll, please\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026World Backup Day<\/b>.<\/p>\n

You knew that already, didn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n

So you\u2019re way ahead of us here, with your backups neatly done and safely stored away.<\/p>\n

Or perhaps not, because sorting out your backups is a bit like taking the garbage out or washing the dog \u2013 you know it needs doing, and you might as well do it now, but it can probably wait until tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Depending on what happens today, of course.<\/p>\n

Well, the bad news is, now that so many of us are working from home, we can\u2019t rely on IT to do it all for us, or to show up at our desks with a smile and a USB drive filled with all those precious files that we just deleted by mistake.<\/p>\n

But the good news is, now that so many of us are working from home, that backup isn\u2019t that hard to do right \u2013 the hardest part is just getting round to doing it properly, or even at all.<\/p>\n

\n

Here are some simple tips that will help you to keep both your work and your home data safe.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

1. Don\u2019t treat backing up simply as \u201csomething you do in case of ransomware\u201d<\/h1>\n

In the early days of personal computers, the main reason people made backups, even if it was just a few important files saved on a special floppy disk, was the sheer unreliability of hardware and software.<\/p>\n

If you ever used DOS, you\u2019ll remember very clearly how one buggy program usually crashed everything, and that any crash could leave the hard disk corrupted so badly that you couldn\u2019t reboot at all.<\/p>\n

Malware was also a serious concern, not least because the crooks hadn\u2019t yet figured out how to make money out of viruses, but nevertheless often used them to wipe out all your data for no clear reason at all.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2020 and we have a lot less to worry about on the reliability front, but we still face a clear and present danger from data loss due to malware, notably ransomware.<\/p>\n

For that reason, backups are a hot topic again, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, where IT can\u2019t go round the office and give hands-on attention to afflicted computers.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, even though backups are a fantastic defensive tool against ransomware, we\u2019re wary of IT procedures that are driven specifically by individual fears rather than by general good practice.<\/p>\n

A regular and reliable backup process will protect you from unexpected data loss of any sort, including cases \u2013 as many people will have experienced when coronavirus lockdowns started and they couldn\u2019t get back into the office \u2013 where your data isn\u2019t lost, but you can\u2019t get at it anyway.<\/p>\n

Condensed into a easily-remembered saying: Backups are a job worth doing, and a job worth doing is worth doing well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2. Don\u2019t leave backups where crooks can find them<\/h1>\n

Even though we\u2019ve just urged you to do backups for general reasons that go above and beyond the specific risk of ransomware, there are important risks posed by contemporary cybercriminals that you need to keep in mind.<\/p>\n

In many recent attacks we\u2019ve investigated, the crooks have had days or even weeks to poke around the victim\u2019s network before initiating their final actions \u2013 such as firing up ransomware on hundreds of computers at the same time.<\/p>\n

Therefore you need to assume, if your backups are accessible online, that the crooks will find them and wipe them out (or steal them and then wipe them out) as part of their attack.<\/p>\n

If ransomware strikes your entire network, or a power surge takes out your laptop where you keep your backup drive plugged in all the time, then you no longer have a backup.<\/p>\n

So, think of live snapshots and real-time backups that you keep online as secondary copies, and make sure you also keep true backup copies offline.<\/p>\n

Whether you\u2019re at home or at work, you can often do that simply by unplugging backup devices or explicitly logging out from cloud backup accounts.<\/p>\n

We also recommend that you add 2FA (two-factor authentication) to your cloud backup accounts for two important reasons.<\/p>\n

Firstly, it helps to keeps the crooks out, so they can\u2019t use your cloud backup to breach your data; secondly, it means you can\u2019t log in accidentally using cached passwords when you didn\u2019t mean to.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

3. Don\u2019t make backups that everyone can read<\/h1>\n

As you probably know, most backup advice includes something about keeping \u201coffsite\u201d backups so that they\u2019re not just offline, they\u2019re stored in a different physical location to the master copy.<\/p>\n

A removable drive stored in a safe-deposit box at your bank is an excellent way to protect your most vital backups, but that\u2019s impossible if you\u2019re in coronavirus lockdown.<\/p>\n

Therefore you are almost certainly going to have to rely on cloud storage \u2013 where your data travels offsite via the internet rather than in your backpack.<\/p>\n

However, we often hear people asking if they really need offsite backups, because they are understandably concerned that storing their data in two different ways in two different places simply doubles down on their risk of a data breach<\/p>\n

Even high-security safe deposits can get burgled, and cloud storage services could suffer an intrusion that isn\u2019t your fault and you couldn\u2019t have prevented.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, there\u2019s an reliable way to protect your offsite data, whether it\u2019s in the cloud or on a removable device, and that\u2019s to encrypt it before it leaves your own laptop or network.<\/p>\n

To help you out, Windows has BitLocker, Macs have FileVault, and Linux has LUKS and cryptsetup, which can be used to create encrypted drives and partitions. (You can create a disk partition out of a file, and then use cryptsetup on that, if you want.)<\/p>\n

There are also numerous free and open source encryption tools that aren\u2019t part of any operating system.<\/p>\n

You can use one of these to encrypt both devices and folders on all your computers, if that\u2019s what you prefer \u2013 remember that BitLocker and FileVault are proprietary and aren\u2019t officially supported on other operating systems.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

4. Don\u2019t neglect the \u201crestore\u201d part of the process<\/h1>\n

Remember that you haven\u2019t really backed anything up unless you can restore it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve helped numerous people over the years who made backups regularly and carefully, but weren\u2019t able to get back the files they wanted when they needed to.<\/p>\n

Ironically, perhaps, none of these cases happened because the user forgot or lost their decryption password \u2013 they simply weren\u2019t well-practised enough in using the restore process to do it reliably, or even at all.<\/p>\n

We also know of ransomware victims who ended up paying the ransom, even though they had working backups, because the restore process they\u2019d created for themselves was just too slow and cumbersome for them to recover in time.<\/p>\n

Treat restoring backups like a fire drill: you\u2019re going down the fire escape, out into the street and getting clear of the building when there isn\u2019t an actual fire so that if the real thing ever happens, you aren\u2019t fighting against both fear and unfamiliarity at the same time.<\/p>\n

Test yourself: work out how long it takes to get the backup ready for restoring, how long it takes extract everything, and how reliably and quickly you can restore just a single file without restoring everything else, which you might not want.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

5. Don\u2019t put it off until tomorrow<\/h1>\n

The only backup you will ever regret\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026is the one you didn\u2019t make.<\/p>\n

Original Article here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Paul Ducklin Today is, wait for it, drum roll, please\u2026 \u2026World Backup Day. You knew that already, didn\u2019t you? So you\u2019re way ahead of us here, with your backups neatly done and safely stored away. Or perhaps not, because … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsroom"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5349"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5356,"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5349\/revisions\/5356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keyweb1.com\/nts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}