Comment: Today is World Backup Day and every backup supplier in the business is putting out marketing scare messages warning of: “Ransomware! Attacks! Back up your data or else.”
We have had such a concentrated and continuous barrage of messages about the need to back up data over the past umpteen years that, surely, no one is unaware of the need to do so. Ok, there may be some laggards.
World Backup Day started out as low-level idea conceived by Youngstown State University student Ismail Jadun, a Reddit contributor, 12 years ago. The aim was to raise backup awareness on the day before April Fool’s Day to stop people making idiots of themselves by losing data they hadn’t backed up.
People with data on storage drives were encouraged to make a pledge: “I solemnly swear to back up my important documents and precious memories on World Backup Day, March 31st.”
The idea spread and spread, so much so that it’s now been co-opted by corporate suppliers as a way of selling more product and services.
But daily exposure to costly ransomware horror stories or lost SaaS app customer data is far a more effective way of raising awareness. We fear ourselves becoming a victim and investigate immutable backups at once.
There’s no need for us to be blitzed by backup product and service suppliers energetically telling us to back up our data. We’ve heard it all before. It’s just like sitting through a safety briefing on aircraft: ‘It’s vitally important that you listen and pay attention as this might be a new aircraft and things could have changed since your previous flight” – like the life jackets are now in the overhead lockers.
Everyone sighs and carries on checking their mobile phone messages while the flight attendants continue through the safety briefing: “Pull the toggle to inflate the jacket – but not until you are outside the aircraft. … And there’s a whistle for drawing attention”..…
The very ubiquity of the message kills its relevance and the repetition dulls the message. So it is with World Backup Day. Anyone who doesn’t back up their data deserves to lose it. End of.
