- Commandment 1: Start with a Written Plan
- Commandment 2: Back Up Data Daily
- Commandment 3: Properly Label Backups
- Commandment 4: Review Backup Settings
- Commandment 5: Maintain Multiple Backups
- Commandment 6: Ensure that the Backup Medium Is Sound
- Commandment 7: Regularly Test Backups
- Commandment 8: House a Backup Offsite
- Commandment 9: Dont Overlook Security
- Commandment 10: Revisit Backup Routines
Commandment 7: Regularly Test Backups
Just backing up data doesn’t promise that the data’s protected. There’s likely no worse feeling in IT than trying to recover from a disaster, only to learn that an organization’s backup files are corrupted or unreadable.
Make it a regular part of your data protection strategy to restore data backups. Only by regularly recovering data backups—even if only within a test environment—can you verify the efficacy of the storage media and associated devices. Testing backups helps confirm that the backups not only are completed properly but also that they can be recovered in the event of disaster. Without practicable proof that your backup routines are creating healthy, recoverable backups, you should have little confidence that the organization’s data is protected.