My belated contribution to World Backup Day.
"Man kütt ja zu nix" - as they say in the Rhineland ( You Never Get Around To It ).
I learned the value of backups very early in my professional life.
As a dual-study student during my first practical phase, I accidentally deleted the root directory of a server - specifically, the server that managed access control for all branches in western Germany.
Luckily, my colleagues didn't behead their panicked young employee, but remained calm and restored the deleted data from a backup. At that time, it wasn't a Veeam backup; it must have been either a late ADSM version or an early TSM version.
In any case, this experience has shaped me ever since: Firstly: It was great to have had such colleagues at that time. And secondly: Always have a backup of your data and systems!
Many years later, data backup is my main professional task.
Thanks to Veeam, regular system and data backups are no longer a major problem. It just works 😉
But the threats have changed. Zero-day exploits and ransomware attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated. Phishing is becoming ever more perfect and often very difficult for users to detect.
A while ago, a customer contracted malware that encrypted several critical systems. Operations came to a standstill.
Fortunately, we followed all of Veeam's best practices, and none of the backup servers were in the domain. All repositories are immutable, and we even had an off-site copy of the data on tape as a backup.
But which state should we restore? How long had the malware been dormant in the systems?
Luckily, we had a solution for that too. With Veeam Secure Backup, we scanned the systems for threats before restoring them. This allowed us to ensure that the malware couldn't strike again immediately.
After a day and a half, all systems were back up and running, and the customer's operations continued smoothly – without having to make any ransom payments. Yes, it cost us two all-nighters, but it was worth it.
In conclusion, the customer was happy, and we were able to demonstrate once again that data backup is a crucial component of both IT and business security.
