A day like today is a good reminder of the importance of backups. I am sure we have all had to restore data from a backup many times in our lives in IT.
Do you know if your company's backup are valid? It always surprises me how many company's purchase a new device for backups, tape drive or VTL, and never try to do a test restore. Trust me you want to make sure you know how to restore data from the device before your really need to.
Not really part of backups but make sure you only retain backups for the time they might be needed, this varies by industry and would imagine by country too. Once the backup has passed the retention date destroy it. I have been through an e-discovery process, it became an almost full-time job for a month to find every backup that was on premise, off site, and even in the IT members cars and homes. It gets expensive too when you are asked to restore data from tapes you no longer have a tape drive for, and you have to contract with a third party to do it on your behalf. It is so much easier to tell the auditors that, in agreement with your company's legal department and the written company policy, all backups are destroyed after the designated period of time.
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