ST Mar-Apr 2021

INTERVIEW: BACKUP BACKUP
"EVERYBODY NEEDS
BACKUP, BUT NOBODY PAYS
ATTENTION TO IT…"
ERIC SIRON IS A LONG-STANDING BACKUP EVANGELIST AND THE
AUTHOR OF THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED 'BACKUP BIBLE' EBOOK.
STORAGE MAGAZINE EDITOR DAVID TYLER SPOKE TO HIM ABOUT
WHY PROPERLY MANAGED BACKUP POLICIES ARE MORE
IMPORTANT THAN EVER, AND WHY RELYING ON A CLOUD
PROVIDER TO DO THE HEAVY LIFTING ON YOUR DATA PROTECTION
IS A RISKY APPROACH TO TAKE
David Tyler: Hardly a week goes by
that we don't see a new
ransomware or data loss horror
story - so why do we still need to tell
people how important backup is?
Eric Siron: For better or for worse, fear is
a poor long term motivator - that's really
the issue.
You can walk into a boardroom and say
"Here's the deal: ransomware, fire, flood,
tornado, hurricane, act of God, meteor
strike, whatever…" and you can get a ton
of money that day - they want you to fix it,
make that problem go away. But when you
come back three years later and explain
that all that stuff is now out of warranty
and needs to be refreshed, the response
all too often is "But hang on, nothing bad
happened - you said meteor strikes etc. -
so we're not going to give you all that
money this time."
That's the boardroom issue. Take it to the
IT guy and he'll tell you he has 87,000
projects to do, and backup is just
something he will (hopefully) get around
to. For such a critical system, it never
ceases to amaze me: everybody needs
backup, but nobody pays attention to it. If
you look at all the major operating
systems, the one aspect of all of them that
is outright trash every time, is the built-in
backup. Nobody takes it seriously.
As a journalist you're obviously seeing
these bad news stories, but if you just go
out into any random business and ask
"When was your last major data loss?",
the chances are they won't even know - it's
just not top of mind. It's very easy to just
think that it won't happen to you - and let's
face it, the odds are heavily in their
favour. That's what I mean about fear not
being enough of a motivator, so we have
to keep at it and make it an issue.
DT: Does that mean that as an industry we
have to find a 'business-positive' reason to
convince organisations to prioritise
backup?
ES: You absolutely do, and if anyone has
any suggestions for what that might be, I'd
love to hear them! How do we explain
how important this is? If you go to pretty
much any technical forum you will see
"Hey, I just got this great new system, now
I want to back it up - but I want to do it
for free." Really? Is that what your system
is worth to you? Of course there are free
backup solutions out there, but is that
really the value you're placing on all of
your data?
I say to these people, whatever happens
to your system, your backup is crucial - if
that's gone, you're finished. They need to
understand that, and also that the law of
averages says that the longer you go
without a failure, the more likely you are
to have one. People get too comfortable
with "… it worked fine yesterday." That's
not a good thing, it's not a good sign for
the future - all it means is that it worked
yesterday. Even with seasoned IT
professionals, that mentality can be hard
to get around.
People will say they are replicating to 78
locations around the world, so what could
possibly go wrong - the simple fact is that
one ransomware strike will render all that
replication useless. The business case is
actually very simple: look at your data,
and decide what that is worth to you. If it
were stolen or lost, what would that do to
your organisation? It's like an insurance
policy: it sucks to keep throwing money at
insurance all the time, until you have to
make a claim - and then you're glad you
did it. What is that old saying? "You have
to be lucky every day, the bad guys only
have to be lucky once…"
DT: Why do you think there is such a
disparity between how the boardroom
views data protection and how the IT
function does?
ES: I've found that business people are
06 STORAGE Mar/Apr 2021
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