Protecting your data means additionally to defense against external and internal threats also reliable storage and recovery after hardware failures. While access protection is covered by all major operating systems (password protection, smart cards), the topic of data storage and recovery must be planned thoughtfully:

• developing a backup strategy, estimate costs due to failure scenarios, worst-case data loss (fire, burglary, etc.)

• selection of appropriate hardware and software for backup and archiving

• planning of periodic testing procedures for backup and recovery to ensure consistency

• backup of applications and operating system states

Poor backup policies can lead to data loss of e.g. accidentally deleted files "falling" out of backup archives. Even corrupt files (particularly database files) might be stored over longer periods of time. This error will be revealed exactly when backups are needed - too late. Versioning and archiving software allows retrieving the last used file version, so important data is recalled.