The truth is less comforting. Many businesses treat backups like Schrödinger’s data: they exist, probably, and they’ll work, maybe, but we won’t open the box until a server melts down or Barry from accounts clicks on a “You’ve Won a Free Cruise” email. And by then, it’s a little late to discover your backup system is just a graveyard of corrupt ZIP files and good intentions.
The False Comfort of a Green Tick
A scheduled backup job completing successfully is not the same thing as your data being restorable. It’s the IT equivalent of getting a “Congratulations!” screen after applying for a mortgage. It means nothing until you test it.Backup systems often report success even when they’re only backing up metadata or partial file sets. Logs look clean, timestamps appear correct, and there’s a smug sense of safety—until the day you try to restore a database and end up with half a customer record and a blinking cursor of doom.
Too many businesses equate automation with assurance. A backup schedule in place? Great. Is it encrypted? Lovely. Stored offsite? Even better. But have you restored it? Have you tried restoring the thing you actually need—from the timeframe you’d likely need it from—onto the infrastructure you’d actually use during an outage?
No? Then you don’t have a backup. You have a backup theory.
The “It’ll Be Fine” Fallacy
There’s a quiet arrogance in the assumption that tech will behave itself. That yesterday’s backup will work perfectly when you need it three months from now, on different hardware, during an actual crisis. That the system restore process will go smoothly when the person who configured it no longer works there and left no documentation except a folder called “DO NOT DELETE” with a README.txt containing three question marks and a shrug emoji.This belief is where resilience quietly dies.
Restoration failures aren’t always dramatic. Sometimes, the process does work… but only partially. Maybe one directory gets skipped. Maybe a permissions issue breaks everything at the OS level. Maybe someone backed up encrypted files without storing the keys anywhere useful. The result: you’re restoring like it’s a trust fall and the floor is covered in jellyfish.
You Have to Break It to Know It Works
Restoring data isn’t something to be done for the first time during an emergency. It’s a drill. It should be mundane. Boring, even. Like fire alarms or awkward small talk with vendors.Start with a dry run. Pick a random week from six months ago. Attempt a full restore to a test environment. See what fails—and something probably will. Look at file integrity, access controls, dependencies. Was the database backed up, or just the app layer? Is it the right version of the data?
And test the restoration process from end to end. That means:
- Finding the data
- Recovering it to a clean environment
- Validating its completeness and integrity
- Ensuring it’s usable for its actual purpose (not just file-level recovery)
Versioning: Because Yesterday’s Mistake Doesn’t Deserve Immortality
Let’s say your backup works. Gold star. But now ask: what version of the data did it save? If you’re only keeping one snapshot per day, or overwriting last week’s data every Monday like some kind of ritual sacrifice, you might be preserving a pristine copy of corrupted or compromised files. Forever.Versioning gives you options. When data gets encrypted, overwritten, or “accidentally” deleted by an intern with admin access, a single recovery point is a gamble. Multiple versions, across staggered intervals, let you roll back to a point before the mess began.
But versioning is also storage-hungry and not always cheap. That’s the tradeoff—resilience vs. resource consumption. It’s less about hoarding every iteration and more about retaining the right ones. Think “strategic nostalgia” rather than digital hoarding.
Documentation: Your Future Self is Dumber Than You Think
The worst time to figure out how your backup system works is while it’s on fire. And yet, documentation around backup and restore procedures is often either nonexistent or… creatively interpreted.You need clear, tested instructions that a mildly caffeinated junior technician can follow under stress. Restore locations, credentials, encryption key locations (securely stored!), contact trees, and known quirks. No “just run the script” explanations, no tribal knowledge passed down via Slack threads.
When disaster strikes, clarity beats cleverness. No one wants to decipher bash scripts named `fix.sh` and `reallyfix.sh`.
Train Like You Fight
A tested backup is a reliable backup. Make restoration testing part of regular operations—not just after a breach or before an audit. Run simulations. Pull different people into the process. Rotate responsibility.If only one person knows how to do a full restore, you don’t have a resilient system—you have a dependency. And if that person is on annual leave, your data is effectively stored in the same vault as Atlantis.
Treat backup testing like fire drills: nobody loves them, but everyone loves surviving fires.
Back to the Future (With Fewer Regrets)
It’s easy to feel confident about backups—until you need them. And when that moment comes, you won’t want assurance. You’ll want certainty.So, stop assuming that a green tick in your dashboard means you’re covered. Stop thinking that “successful” equals “restorable.” Break things on purpose. Try to recover from chaos. Document what fails. Fix it. Then break it again.
Your backups might be lying to you. Make sure you’re asking the right questions—and demanding better answers.
Article kindly provided by cst.co.uk
