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You must have heard of people losing phones, computer hard disks crashing, or a network being taken over by a hacker, leading to the loss of key data and forcing people and organisations to spend huge amounts to recover the data and get things on the move again. If you think it is happening to someone else and won’t happen to you, you are mistaken. “Data isn’t just information—it’s the backbone of operations.
Losing it means losing control over supply chains, customer trust, and business continuity,” Zaiba Sarang, Co-founder, iThink Logistics, points out. Vishal Salvi, CEO of Quick Heal Technologies Limited, says that ransomware now accounts for 1 in every 595 detected threats. “Modern ransomware isn’t just about locking systems—it’s increasingly designed to steal sensitive data, amplifying the risks of financial losses, operational paralysis, and irreversible damage to customer trust,” he points out.
This dual threat of data theft and system lockdown calls for a robust backup strategy reinforced by data encryption, access controls and regular updates for optimum cyber resilience. Every year, March 31 is observed as World Backup Day to bring awareness among stakeholders on the importance of backing up data regularly. A backup is a copy of all your important files — for example, your family photos, home videos, documents and emails.
Instead of storing it all in one place (like your computer or smartphone), you keep a copy of everything somewhere safe. Globally, over 1.8 zettabytes of data is produced every year.
However, nearly 30 per cent of people have never even back up their data, according to the World Backup Day website. Further, 113 phones are lost or stolen every minute; 29 per cent of data loss cases are caused by accidents and 10 - 20 per cent of consumer PCs encounter malware in a given year,the website says. The campaign to back up started as a Reddit suggestion in 2011 to raise awareness about the importance of backing up data and to encourage individuals and businesses to protect their digital assets.
March 31 was selected before April Fool’s Day, serving as a reminder not to be a “fool” by losing data due to a lack of backups, the website says. “We all know someone who lost critical data, whether it was their videos, photos, music, book reports or personal stuff. Hopefully, this day will make everyone think about their situation, learn about the various options and get files back up,” said Ismail Jadun, founder of World Backup Day.
Sudharsan Aravamuthan, Head – Systems Engineering, Pure Storage India, a subsidiary of the US-based Pure Storage Inc, said India’s digital landscape is experiencing unprecedented growth, with AI-driven innovations transforming industries nationwide. However, this rapid advancement has been accompanied by escalating cyber threats. Business Continuity Plan is key and all organisations irrespective of size should periodically use their data recovery (DR) set up both in planned and unplanned manner, to test the effectiveness of DR and restoration.
It comes with cost and almost all see it as a discretionary cost; it is time all see this as essential standing cost of doing business, said M P Vijay Kumar, Executive Director & Group CFO , Sify Technologies Limited. – Samir K. Mody, VP of Threat Research at K7 Computing Pvt.
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