I read this week about an attack suffered by an unfortunate PC user, whose data files were encrypted by a piece of malicious software.  She then received a "ransom note" requesting money in order to unlock her data.

This unscrupulous "ransomware" attack - apparently emanating from Russia - was unsuccessful as the lady concerned had nothing valuable on her PC and wisely refused to pay.  However, it made me think of the numerous occasions on which I come across business clients who still don't have any kind of satisfactory backup regime in place.

A couple of weeks back I visited a very nice chap who runs an engineering company.  He has been doing so for over 20 years and uses computer aided design software to draw up the products.  He tracks his customers, orders, invoicing - the whole shooting match - on personal computers.

And what's his backup regime?  Well, every so often, he copies some files off onto a CD.  When he remembers.  He couldn't say exactly when that last was.

Now this gentleman is an intelligent human being - he knew that if anything went wrong with his computers he was...  well, I won't use the term he used, but let's just say his successful business would be no more.

So, I guess it's worth reiterating the age-old adage that an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.  There are many different ways to backup your data, but the more automated, quick and easy it is, the more likely you are to keep doing it regularly.

And don't forget the golden rules...

You can never have too many backups