August 2026
Five signs your backup is not actually working
You will not find out from the success emails.
By Nate Weigel, Protection Director
Backups fail quietly. The software keeps reporting success long after the copy stopped being useful. Here are the signs we look for in an assessment.
Nobody can name the last restore. If the last time anyone restored a file is not a date someone can say out loud, the backup has never been proven.The success email goes to an inbox. Alerts that go to a person's mailbox get filtered, ignored or lost when that person leaves. Alerts should land in a queue someone is paid to work.The backup drive is the same age as the server. Data grows. Drives do not. A backup that has run out of room skips the newest files and often still says success.Microsoft 365 is not in it. Email and cloud files are not backed up by Microsoft in the way people assume. If the backup only covers the server, half the business is uncovered.The backup lives on the network it protects. Ransomware encrypts what it can reach. A backup on a share the server can write to is a backup the attacker can reach too.Any one of these is a conversation. Two is a project. All five is the situation a prospect came to us in this year, after his provider of several years turned out to have none of it working.
A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan. Ask for the date of the last tested restore.
What to actually test Did you knowRecovery time is a number. If nobody can say how long it takes to be back to work after the server dies, nobody has planned it.
A recovery plan with a time on it
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