Ransomware, dead drives, stolen laptops, fat-fingered deletes. The only question that matters afterward: do you have a backup that actually restores? Most people find out the answer too late.
One copy on the computer, one on an external drive or server, one off-site (cloud). And ransomware's favorite victim is the backup drive that's always plugged in, it gets encrypted right alongside everything else.
Photos, taxes, the business books, 20 years of family pictures. One laptop, one drive, zero copies. One spilled coffee from disaster.
Ransomware encrypts every file. Or the drive just dies (they all do eventually). Or the laptop walks off from a coffee shop.
The external drive was plugged in, so ransomware got it too. The cloud sync faithfully synced the encrypted files. The old backup job silently stopped running in 2023.
Paying criminals maybe gets files back. Recovery labs cost thousands and promise nothing. The photos are just gone.
3-2-1: three copies, two different media, one off-site. Cloud backup (not just sync) covers the off-site leg automatically.
Disconnect or rotate the local drive, or use backup software with versioning so ransomware can't rewrite history.
Test a restore twice a year. Pick one random file and bring it back. Five minutes. Now it's real.
Businesses: get immutable off-site backups that even a compromised machine can't delete. This is exactly what we build, with nightly verification. Ask us.
KCCS installs, secures, and watches business systems all over Southern Colorado. Get a free assessment — a real engineer walks your site and hands you a written punch list.
Or call 719-530-4040 · Response within 2 business hours