Why should I backup?

A lost laptop, a stray mouse click or a USB key that slips out of your pocket - in an instant, your important data can be lost forever. 

Whether it's the last many weeks of work, your undergraduate essay or your collection of poetry is immaterial - if you have data that are important to you or to Aarhus University, then you should regularly do backups, so you do not lose the data. 

You can make a backup by copying your files to another storage device such as an external hard drive or a USB key. You can also save your files on a network drive; then your IT department will perform the regular backed for you. 

What does your IT department do and what should you do yourself?

The most important information security job at all is to make regular backups to ensure that data can be reconstructed if they have been deleted, overwritten, a disk has failed or a computer stolen.

Information security concerns all employees and students. We have a duty to see that unique data is backed up "as quickly as possible." It is simply forbidden to have unsecured unique data. 

The key is common sense. You must assess how much data we can afford to lose and organize your backups after that. 

The university's servers and network drives are covered by regular backup, and in principle, all data must be stored on university servers. Of course there are situations where unique data cannot readily be stored on secure servers (eg. data collected in the field or while calculations are in progress), but as an employee or student at Aarhus University you are obliged to protect all data by storing them securely at the earliest opportunity. 

"Earliest opportunity" varies from case to case; determine it based on a judgment of how much data you can afford to lose and get the IT department to help with technological solutions (local backup devices, remote data synchronization, etc.). 

There is always a solution that fits the data you need to protect – if we don’t have a standard solution then we’ll invent one. But you simply must ensure that you can always get data back, this is a task for ALL staff and students. 

3 quick questions and answers about backup

Q: I am employed and always keep all data on network drives. Does this mean that I can always get an older version from a random date back if I need it? 

A: NO! Backup and archiving is NOT the same. IT departments usually only do backup, not archiving. The media (tape or disc) will be overwritten after a period of time. If you need to get back previous versions - eg. what a database looked like when you published an article – then there must be an agreed strategy for archiving the data. IT departments are not able to have all data in all versions available. 

Q: I am a student and have no access to the university network drives. Is a USB key or USB disk not adequate for personal backup? 

A: It's certainly excellent to copy files onto a USB key or a small USB drive. It's even better to use a proper backup program that saves previous versions too - you could of course make mistakes that you later want to correct. But remember NEVER to store the PC and the USB key or drive together - so they can be stolen together! 

Q: What about DropBox or uBackup, UbuntuOne, MemoPal, SkyDrive or similar on-line services? 

A: These web-based "free" storage solutions are of course much better than no backup and can generally be used by students. (But do not expect the IT departments know them all in detail!) University employees must use the university's servers. And remember that under no circumstances should sensitive or confidential data be placed on this type of services. Such data MUST be stored on university equipment and if they are used on laptops (or other mobile devices) then they MUST be encrypted.