What's the skinny on your backup strategy?

Do you know the backup procedures that are in place in your company?  Do you know who is responsible for what?  Do you even know how a backup takes place within your own department? 

If you said yes, you could be in minority.  According to a quick introduction to CW's Ultimate Backup Guide, those who know the procedures for back ups in your department or organization could be in the minority.  That's a pretty scary idea.  How can so few people know the procedures for backup when it's such an integral part of your company's viability?

Don't think that backup is essential?  Ask a few of the businesses that suffered any major loss (earthquakes, hurricanes, virus/hacker attacks, disgruntled employees, and any OTHER disaster that you can think of).  Those who recovered quickly and with the least loss possible will tell you they had backups of their backups and that many (if not all) of the people in management positions (and some who weren't) were trained in all of the policies and procedures of backups and recovery for their departments.  Those who didn't have these in place may never have recovered. 

If those without clearly defined and communicated backup policies did manage to recover, they didn't do it without major loss.  Whether it was loss of data, loss of customers, or loss of revenues, it was there.  And those companies will struggle for years to recuperate those losses. 

If you go to the expense of putting a backup system in place, it should follow that you also go to the expense of establishing and communicating the strategies that make that backup system effective.  Unfortunately, even though it should happen, all too often it doesn't.  CW's guide is a great starting point, but there has to be effective communication and education within the organization for backup to truly be effective.

Backup is not a technology that you can build and forget.  (Is there really any technology that is?)  Once you put your backup system in place, you have to develop the policies and procedures that make it work.  One organization I worked with had a tape backup system where the tapes where stored on the same rack with the servers that were backed up.  The tapes weren't labeled, and there was no off-site plan for storage.  On the days the managers remembered to do a backup, the previous backup tape was mixed in with all of the others.  A disaster would spell disaster for this organization.  And it will happen, probably sooner rather than later.

All that would need to happen for this company to have an effective backup system is for some policies to be put in place that outline when and how backups, backup media, and storage of that media should be handled.  Simple rules like specific dates and times that backup should take place, guidelines for storage of backup tapes, and pentalities that address non-conformance would make that organization far more likely to be able to recover from a disaster.  Instead, they'll suffer.  And learn the hard way.  Will you?