Signs it is time to revisit backups

There is no clever trick in this one, just a handful of decisions worth making deliberately. A few signals that backups is due some attention.

The realistic threat for most small businesses is automated and opportunistic, not targeted. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• An untested backup is a hope, not a backup
• Keep a copy somewhere the main system cannot reach

What good looks like

Know how long a restore actually takes. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

What this looks like day to day

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. Three things worth confirming about backups before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• An untested backup is a hope, not a backup — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.