Backup in practice
Making a backup means copying data, documents and settings to a place other than the one where you use them every day. If the original breaks, is deleted by mistake or gets locked by a virus, you restore the copy and get back to work.
For a business, data is often the hardest thing to rebuild: customer details, accounts, projects, photos, client history. You can buy a new computer in a day, but not years of work. Regular backups turn a disaster into a setback.
A simple and widely used scheme is the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of the data, on two different media, one of them off-site, for example in the cloud. In our nightly backup example an automation copies the files every night to external storage, without anyone having to remember: a typical job for cron.
The most common mistake is never testing a restore: a backup you cannot recover is useless. Try restoring a few files at regular intervals, check that the copies really are current and keep at least one disconnected from the network, so an attack cannot reach it. And remember that the database behind your management software needs backing up too, not just the document folders.
