When backups is worth the effort

The version of this that works is simpler than the version most people imagine. Backups is not free, and pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions.

Security is a maintenance habit rather than a purchase, which is why it drifts. It is the sort of thing that looks like polish right up until it costs you an enquiry.

When it is worth it

An untested backup is a hope, not a backup. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

When it is not

If nothing downstream depends on it and nobody is complaining, it can wait. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions.

How to decide

Know how long a restore actually takes. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

How to tell if yours is fine

The cheapest security work is the boring kind done on a schedule. Three things worth confirming about backups before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Know how long a restore actually takes — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

None of this needs a rewrite. Most of it is a morning's work once someone decides to do it.