If ransomware encrypted all of your company’s files today, how long would it take you to get back up and running? The honest answer, in most small businesses, is “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure we could”. And that’s the problem: backup is the last line of defense, but it is almost always the most neglected.

The 3-2-1 rule

It is the bare minimum for any serious backup strategy:

  • 3 copies of your information: the original and two backups.
  • 2 different types of media: for example, a NAS and a disk, or a NAS and the cloud. Not two identical disks on the same shelf.
  • 1 off-site copy: in the cloud or at another physical location. If a fire, a theft or an electrical failure takes out the office, your backup survives.

Why “saving to an external drive” isn’t enough

An external drive plugged into the server is the most common backup and the most fragile. Ransomware doesn’t distinguish between production files and backup files: if the drive is connected, it encrypts it all the same. And if someone only unplugs it “every now and then”, the backup is always out of date.

The mistakes we see most often

  • A backup that was never tested: many backups fail silently and it’s only discovered when it’s too late.
  • Backup and production on the same machine: a single point of failure.
  • No off-site copy: it protects against failures, but not against disasters.
  • No retention policy: if you deleted a file by mistake and the backup only keeps yesterday’s version, there’s no going back.

Testing the restore is part of the backup

A backup that isn’t tested isn’t a backup, it’s a hope. Set aside time every so often to restore a test file and time how long it takes. If restoring everything would take you a week, that is the most valuable information you can have before an incident happens.

Ransomware isn’t the only risk

An employee accidentally deletes a folder, a disk fails without warning, an update corrupts a database. Backups solve all of this too. It’s not just about defending against cyberattacks: it’s about being able to recover your operations after any kind of loss.

At SYSCOM we design tailored backup strategies: we define what to protect, how often, on which media and how it would be restored. If today you don’t know how you would get back to work after losing data, it’s worth having a conversation.