Backup Is The Backbone Of Cyber Resilience

By Justine Kurtz, Carbonite

A recent report revealed that across the globe, backup habits of businesses and their employees alike aren’t that great. For example, even though 42% of workers have needed to access a backed-up file since the pandemic began, only 26% actually back up their data to ensure it’s recoverable in the event of a cyberattack. Additionally, only 54% of companies back up Microsoft 365 data, even though the global pandemic has really brought the need for these types of filesharing and collaboration tools in the workplace to the forefront.

According to Jamie Zajac, VP of Product Management, backup is the backbone of cyber resilience, and shouldn’t be taken for granted. For this post, I asked for her take on some of these numbers and what businesses can do to shore up their backup strategies and become more resilient against cyberattacks.

Why do you think there seem to be discrepancies between businesses knowing they should back up their data and actually doing it?

First, we have to remember that most people don’t seek out a backup solution until after they’ve experienced a data loss event. Some of these numbers may be coming from businesses that just haven’t personally felt that pain yet. Second, we should consider that problems don’t just happen because you don’t back up at all; they also happen when you don’t back up the right things. For example, a business may only backup up one or two servers, or something they identified as critical a few years ago. But they may not be accounting for how their business environments have changed as they’ve hired new people or adopted new services. They haven’t necessarily revisited their cyber resilience plan or the data protection/backup component of it.