Proper Backup Procedure

See: Coppola plea after computer theft

Film director Francis Ford Coppola has appealed for the return of his
computer backup device following a robbery at his house in Argentina on
Wednesday.

I feel for Mr. Coppola, he was smart enough and took the time to create and maintain backups of his computer on an external device. Unfortunately Mr. Coppola like so many other people/organizations forget the #2 and #3 rules of computer backups.

1. Make frequent backups of everything important.
2. Test your backup by restoring the data often.
3. Keep copies of your backups in a different location from what you are backing up.

A proper backup strategy should be devised around how critical your data is, and how often it changes. An off-site rotation procedure might be appropriate on a monthly or weekly schedule depending on what the size of your daily delta is and how disruptive it will be for your business to recover from the loss.

This reminds me that I need to write a whitepaper / presentation on backups and business continuity.