Backup or it could be your funeral!

This week gave us a very blunt reminder about the value of having regular backups.  Oh, yeah, and backups that are up to date!  It also served us a slap in the face for assuming "someone else had done it".  The space we have on our US based server we had, erroneously, assumed was well secure.  After all, it was bought from a reputable, well though of ISP.  The sad truth is, it wasn't - in fact they'd left huge doors open for hackers to get in.  And guess what?  Get in they did!

The good news, and the bouquet for us, after getting the brickbat for being dummies and assuming, was that our backup regime was regular and automated.  Thank goodness.  And it was also nice that we didn't get hit as badly as we could have been.  Only one site was unrepairable in place and required a restore from a backup - a 5 minute job.  There was a number of hours of combing through each site, rooting out the junk these malicious little <insert bad words here!!> put there.

Perhaps you think you have nothing valuable to lose. If I took your computer and erased everything except the programs, would that bother you?  If you, truthfully, can't reply an unequivocal "Nope!", then you have files that are valuable to you and you should be backing up regularly.  We back up to 3 different places - some local, some off site. We have a USB 320Mb drive plugged into each computer, a 1Tb network drive all computers can access, plus we also send a copy to the cloud at either SugarSync or Amazon S3.  Redundancy isn't something you can have too much of!  And all these backups are automated, either with the off-site systems monitor or, locally, with a nifty program called AutoVer.  This program monitors user-selected folders and/or files and backups them up when there's a change.  Simple, safe, secure.

The takeaway:  Hackers couldn't care less how much pain they cause, and ANYONE is a potential target.  They hack because they can, or want to prove they can, and because sites are there.  I recommend you look at some of the tools on the Gibson Research Corp site, and see how vulnerable you are.  Then hurry to set up a good backup regime.  One day you just may be mighty glad!