Hyderabad: World Backup Day, observed on March 31 every year within the global tech community, emphasises the critical significance of safeguarding data through backups to mitigate the risk of data loss. Since its inception in 2011, World Backup Day has served as a global rallying point, underlining the importance of data backup in ensuring business continuity post a data loss catastrophe, often stemming from malicious cyber assaults.
History of World Backup Day
The history of World Backup Day traces back to a distressing tech ordeal encountered by an individual in 2011—losing their hard drive. Taking to Reddit, the person showed his frustration and appealed to everyone to keep backups. They lamented the absence of a timely reminder regarding the imperative nature of data backups.
Significance of World Backup Day
Maxtor, a company that knows a lot about hard drives, responded to this call, leading to an annual tradition aimed at reinforcing awareness about maintaining duplicate copies of digital possessions. Held annually on March 31, the day prompts individuals to fortify their digital troves, recognising the prevailing inadequacies in safeguarding information despite our heavy dependence on technology.
What is Backup?
A backup consists of a copy of data, residing in a secondary location. Its primary purpose lies in furnishing a safety net to retrieve crucial information should the primary data source become compromised or inaccessible. Most people think backup is boring, but when you back up your data, you're making a second copy of anything and everything that you don't want to lose. If something happens to the original, you can restore the backups to your computer (phone or tablet) with a backup.
The theme of World Backup Day
The theme for this year's World Backup Day is "Save Digital Memories," creating a sense of nostalgia while emphasising our collective responsibility to actively preserve digital documents. From personal mementoes to official documents essential for business continuity, the theme encompasses the overarching goal of fortifying our digital legacy against the ravages of time and technological mishaps.
Backups act as a shield against the malware and ransomware of data, offering a lifeline for expedited recovery in the event of data compromise. The advent of remote access capabilities empowers users to retrieve their files from virtually anywhere.
Stats on Backup
- 121% of people have never made a backup.
- 67% of data loss is caused by hard drive crashes or system failure.
- 10% of data loss is a result of software failure.
- 70% of small businesses go out of business within one year of a data loss incident.
- 1 out of 10 laptops are stolen.
- 10 out of 10 people have the capability of spilling liquids or dropping their smartphone in a puddle.
- One small accident or failure could destroy all the important stuff you care about.
- 113 phones are lost or stolen every minute.
- 29% of data loss cases are caused by accidents.
- 30% of all computers are already infected with malware.
Six ways to back up your data
- Use an External Hard Drive
- Use a USB Flash Drive
- Use Optical Media
- Use Cloud Storage
- Use an Online Backup Service
- Use Invest in a Network Attached Storage (NAS) Device
