World Backup Day: Set up and do it

On March 31st every year, “World Backup Day” takes place. It is intended to remind people of data backup, which many find rather unpleasant. Data loss due to missing backups can ruin companies, but there are also situations in the private sphere where the absence of data can become very painful.

In many cases, automatic backups are already taking place, which those hardly affected notice. Microsoft now offers the option to back up settings and apps installed from the MS Store online and restore them from the cloud. The company now also sets the file storage to the OneDrive cloud storage by default. This allows systems to be restored quickly and extensively, but only the Microsoft apps and their data. Users have to take care of the others themselves.

The picture is similar for Android or iOS smartphones. App settings land in the cloud and can be quickly restored. However, important data such as personal photos are usually only available on the devices initially; here too, users or administrators are responsible for ensuring backups.

World Backup Day: A reminder to “just do it”

To prevent the situation of losing data irrevocably, setting up a data backup is essential. The data should be available at least in a second location, but ideally, interested parties refine the concept a little here. There are often pitfalls that should be considered. For example, automatically uploading photos from your phone to rented cloud storage is quick to set up. However, further redundancy is recommended in case automatic mechanisms at the provider, for example, mistakenly classify family beach photos as misuse and the provider then blocks online access.

The security checklists from c't provide simple yet valuable tips here. In addition, the BSI has provided instructions for setting up data backups for various operating systems, from computers to smartphones (directly as a PDF).

World Backup Day in 2025 was also worth a reminder for us: Just do it!

(dmk)