RiverTrail Technology Blog

In IT, there is a painful proverb we live by: A backup isn’t a backup until a restore has been successful.

Many business owners and even some junior sysadmins fall into the set-it-and-forget-it trap. They see the green checkmark in their backup software and sleep soundly. As an IT expert who has performed countless digital autopsies on failed systems, I can tell you that a green checkmark is often a liar.

In the IT world, hoping your backups work is a recipe for disaster. From a pro perspective, a backup that hasn't been tested is just a pile of useless data. We’ve moved past the days of just saving files to a thumb drive; today, it's about business continuity, making sure a company doesn't go bankrupt because a server died or a hacker got in.

If you want to keep a business alive, you need to know these three points.