make your own backups!
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You're right, I attribute this to incompetence rather than malice. But the main point remains...if something's important to you, you can't have the only instance of it existing only on a cloud service.
Absolutely
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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BryanFazekas wrote:
I doubt that this situation is exactly by design, as the accounts affected are not ones that have been dormant for 2+ years
There is an old story from the Computing Center at the University of Copenhagen, around 1970 (so, no URL reference to the event :-)). Clocks with battery backup were not common. After a power failure, the operator had to type in the current date and time of day on the system console. It happened that the operator mistyped the year without discovering that he missed by a decade. Before the mistake was discovered, they had run the cleanup program that deleted all files that hadn't been touched for six months. There is an interesting 'Part 2' to this story: Disk space was terribly expensive in those days, so all large data sets were kept on 1/2" magnetic tape. The cleanup program didn't wipe the tapes. But ... Standard tape formats, used when exchanging data with other installations, contained complete metadata for every file. Even tape was expensive, so Univac (this happed on a Univac 1100 system) had devised a format where only the data blocks were densely packed on the tape, while all metadata was maintained on disk, for fast searching for files. All this metadata was wiped by the cleanup procedure. The 'real data' was still there on tape, but on which tape? Where on that tape? Noone could tell. Our professor, when telling this story, said that a for a few very important projects, the viable tape wheel candidates had been dissected by hand, and the blocks put together, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Fortunately, in those days, a lot of research didn't depend completely on the computer, it was more like a calculator that you picked up for specific calculations; that was all. Imagine the situation today, if the next pandemic doesn't infect humans, but the virus thrive on silicon and is capable of getting through the shields to eat every logical gate of all digital electronics on earth. I have difficulties finding a single (Western) human activity that could continue completely unaffected if that happened.
trønderen wrote:
but the virus thrive on silicon and is capable of getting through the shields
Shields? Chips have a epoxy package. So silicon is not exposed there. And actually inside is Silicon Dioxide. And Silicon Dioxide is not very reactive. So I doubt a virus could exist by itself that could do that. It would require a medium as well which means no spread. Now plastic might be a better candidate for that scenario. I would not be surprised if there are also limitations even with that scenario. So probably best to just stick with an EMP.
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I never trusted online backups. I do not trust them to keep my data safe. Nor to keep them private. Nor to allow me to store arbitrary files. Nor to be able to present my photo album to my grandchildren 50 years from now. Nor to not show them my very personal notes that were meant for noone but myself. I could use an online backup to save an extra backup, in case my primary backup is lost. A lot of files in that extra backup would be encrypted before sending them down in the crypt. I am not currently doing that. Does the online bakcup have an offsite bakcup? (Thanks to fgs1963 for reminding us about offsite copies!) This story seems to suggest that the answer is 'No'. There are a couple other points that are often overlooked: I have some old files backed up on both DC100 and DC300 quarter inch tape cassette. (Actually, I even have some files on 1/2" open reel 7-track tape, but I made that tape mostly to learn how to handle the tape station, not really for bakup purposes). I have files on two different Travan tape cassettes. I have at least one hundred 8" floppies (they were really flopping!). The first digital camera I used saved the photos on 2" floppies - I still got the floppies, but the camera belonged to my workplace, 30+ years ago. I never had my own Travan station; it belonged to my workplace, too. Obviously, I didn't have a 7-track tape station at home. I could have had a DC300 (the format changed name to QIC); they weren't that expensive, but I rather brought my private files to work and saved them to tape there. I guess that if my life depended on it, it would be possible to have the files on QIC tape recovered. It probably would take too much time to save my life. It probably would be terribly expensive. But there were a whole crowd of variants, in track layout, packing density etc., so don't expect just any old QIC station to be able to read my first-generation DC300 tapes (before the QIC standard arrived). The open reel and Travan tapes, and the 2" floppy, are nice computer museum artifacts. Even if my life depended on it, I guess I would have crossed the river before anyone could get hold of a reader for them. I actually have both 5.25" and 3.5" floppy units, but I am about to ditch the PC that can handle them; I haven't booted it for years. Most likely, some of my friends still have 3.5" units, Maybe even 5.25", I wouldn't be sure of that. Then comes the second major problem: I have migrated 'the most important' files from one medium to another. Over 4
trønderen wrote:
and the kids would find it boring. So it doesn't really matter if the files are lost.
Yep. The fact that one person finds is significant and valuable does not mean that others will. The only difference with digital is that it will give someone the chance to toss it without agonizing over whether they should keep it or not.
trønderen wrote:
Some of my amateur photographer friends
I had an office mate who had 1,800 photos of his 18 month old child. All labeled. All digital fortunately which made getting the count easier of course. (Even worse I can't remember the exact number but it might have been 18,000.) Second child was on the way. There is a well known phenomenon where parents take way more photos of the first child than the children that come after that.
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This one's going to run and run, but what I do is: - daily backups to a second, local hard drive - daily backups to OneDrive (I use that because storage there is cheap) I feel on pretty safe ground here, don't reckon I'm going to lose anything. I used to also back up occasionally to an external drive, but I don't do that anymore.
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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Presumably full rather than overwrites? If just a overwrite then this is susceptible to a ransomware attack. Could still be even so if the older ones are still writable.
OneDrive keeps old versions. 30 days, IIRC
Paul Sanders. If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter - Blaise Pascal. Some of my best work is in the undo buffer.
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trønderen wrote:
but the virus thrive on silicon and is capable of getting through the shields
Shields? Chips have a epoxy package. So silicon is not exposed there. And actually inside is Silicon Dioxide. And Silicon Dioxide is not very reactive. So I doubt a virus could exist by itself that could do that. It would require a medium as well which means no spread. Now plastic might be a better candidate for that scenario. I would not be surprised if there are also limitations even with that scenario. So probably best to just stick with an EMP.
I guess you didn't get my point. If, one way or the other (I'm not going to suggest any alternative to a virus; I guess you would start arguing against that as well) all our digital processors stopped working, can you imagine the effect on our culture? It would be devastating. We have made ourselves, both personally and as a society/culture 100% dependent on digital technology. That is what worries me. Not the probability of some randomly picked, specific threat. It could be something completely different.
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dandy72 wrote:
Isn't everything about a tape backup solution proprietary?
Up until about 20 years ago tape was the only solution. So that really wasn't a consideration. Not to mention that automation systems even with tape were very expensive. So that meant a IT guy needed to swap tapes in and out.
dandy72 wrote:
The non-starter is when you have massive amounts of data
There are other potential problems. For example a database with encrypted columns. Where is the key? Or an encrypted file. Where is the key or passphrase for that. Those are not necessarily relevant just to disaster recovery either. If you have 7 years of backups, which is often considered a norm for financial data, and you get a subpoena you will need for legal reasons to show that you tried to recover that data. At one company I considered disaster recovery just not possible. The DBA stated it would take more than a week to restore the database from the back up. But in addition there was no back up for the proprietary machine that ran the database. I figured best case scenario was that it would take 6 weeks to recover if the hardware failed. They originally budgeted an onsite back up machine but that was nixed due to the cost. Nixed by those above operations/development.
jschell wrote:
Up until about 20 years ago tape was the only solution.
I would raise that to 30 years, if you talk about the only solution. 21 years ago, in 2002, my employer at the time - the National Library of Norway - threw out their tape robot, replacing it with a big wall of RAIDed hard disks. Tape was considered an outdated technology; certainly not 'the only solution'.
So that meant a IT guy needed to swap tapes in and out.
This tape robot, thrown out in 2002, was fully automated. No manual handling of tapes. I am not sure how old the robot was; it had been there a few years when I entered the job. Their policy was to migrate all archived data to new media every 5 to 10 years, and the move to RAID disks were considered overdue. So I guess the tape robot was, at the very latest, installed around 1995.
For example a database with encrypted columns. Where is the key?
Certainly an essential question. But it is the same regardless of which backup technology you choose. With one slight modification: When I am in physical control of the backup media, I consider encryption for the purpose of the backup itself to be less important. If I were to send the files to some other backup service, there is a lot more that I would encrypt. But I take your scenario to mean a database encryption that is done in any case, not just for backup purposes.
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trønderen wrote:
and the kids would find it boring. So it doesn't really matter if the files are lost.
Yep. The fact that one person finds is significant and valuable does not mean that others will. The only difference with digital is that it will give someone the chance to toss it without agonizing over whether they should keep it or not.
trønderen wrote:
Some of my amateur photographer friends
I had an office mate who had 1,800 photos of his 18 month old child. All labeled. All digital fortunately which made getting the count easier of course. (Even worse I can't remember the exact number but it might have been 18,000.) Second child was on the way. There is a well known phenomenon where parents take way more photos of the first child than the children that come after that.
When digital cameras arrived, I was not first in line to get one. Two of my co-workers were, long before me. We had a social mountain cabin weekend at work, and Monday morning, one of those digital guys put his 700 photos from the weekend on the company file server. The other digital one followed up, publishing his 500 photos on the company server. When I had my 36 slides developed a couple of days later, I didn't care to try compete with the 1200 photos already on the server (actually more: Several other co-workers had added their 100, 150 or 200 photos.) On the other hand: The silver photos I made are still among those I use to show what kind of pictures I am proud to make.
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I guess you didn't get my point. If, one way or the other (I'm not going to suggest any alternative to a virus; I guess you would start arguing against that as well) all our digital processors stopped working, can you imagine the effect on our culture? It would be devastating. We have made ourselves, both personally and as a society/culture 100% dependent on digital technology. That is what worries me. Not the probability of some randomly picked, specific threat. It could be something completely different.
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To this day, I maintain that I had stuff on One Drive that simply disappeared ... while the folders remained. So, no, I don't rely on the cloud for "backups".
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
The thing is, there isn't just one cloud. If you're not precious about them having your files, backing up stuff to TWO (or more) cloud services would seem to be a robust option. Even if MS lose your data today, it's pretty unlikely Google will too. Voila! Redundant off-site backups.
Telegraph marker posts ... nothing to do with IT Phasmid email discussion group ... also nothing to do with IT Beekeeping and honey site ... still nothing to do with IT
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One Second After - Wikipedia[^] This novel is a decent read that explores that very scenario.
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When digital cameras arrived, I was not first in line to get one. Two of my co-workers were, long before me. We had a social mountain cabin weekend at work, and Monday morning, one of those digital guys put his 700 photos from the weekend on the company file server. The other digital one followed up, publishing his 500 photos on the company server. When I had my 36 slides developed a couple of days later, I didn't care to try compete with the 1200 photos already on the server (actually more: Several other co-workers had added their 100, 150 or 200 photos.) On the other hand: The silver photos I made are still among those I use to show what kind of pictures I am proud to make.
trønderen wrote:
one of those digital guys put his 700 photos from the weekend on the company file server. The other digital one followed up, publishing his 500 photos on the company server.
lol...just one weekend? Did they even do anything except take pictures?
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I guess you didn't get my point. If, one way or the other (I'm not going to suggest any alternative to a virus; I guess you would start arguing against that as well) all our digital processors stopped working, can you imagine the effect on our culture? It would be devastating. We have made ourselves, both personally and as a society/culture 100% dependent on digital technology. That is what worries me. Not the probability of some randomly picked, specific threat. It could be something completely different.
trønderen wrote:
If, one way or the other
Yes. As noted in my reply and in the other post - EMP. That is a high altitude electromagnetic pulse. A nuclear weapon, high altitude can do this. But a solar flare can also do it. There are any number of fictional books that describe those scenarios. Some a bit more factual than others. The most significant failure is not necessarily 'personal' electronics but rather that the entire electrical system, especially power station transformers, would be fried.
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jschell wrote:
Up until about 20 years ago tape was the only solution.
I would raise that to 30 years, if you talk about the only solution. 21 years ago, in 2002, my employer at the time - the National Library of Norway - threw out their tape robot, replacing it with a big wall of RAIDed hard disks. Tape was considered an outdated technology; certainly not 'the only solution'.
So that meant a IT guy needed to swap tapes in and out.
This tape robot, thrown out in 2002, was fully automated. No manual handling of tapes. I am not sure how old the robot was; it had been there a few years when I entered the job. Their policy was to migrate all archived data to new media every 5 to 10 years, and the move to RAID disks were considered overdue. So I guess the tape robot was, at the very latest, installed around 1995.
For example a database with encrypted columns. Where is the key?
Certainly an essential question. But it is the same regardless of which backup technology you choose. With one slight modification: When I am in physical control of the backup media, I consider encryption for the purpose of the backup itself to be less important. If I were to send the files to some other backup service, there is a lot more that I would encrypt. But I take your scenario to mean a database encryption that is done in any case, not just for backup purposes.
trønderen wrote:
Tape was considered an outdated technology; certainly not 'the only solution'
In terms of cost and process it was about 20 years ago that a transition became possible. For the example you gave they were already spending a lot on the existing system and the new system would have also have been expensive. Smaller organizations could not have afforded either solution. And there are many more smaller organizations than larger. So in effect manual tape was the only solution. Even more so since at that point even small companies started increasing the amount of data that was stored digitally (versus paper.)
trønderen wrote:
But it is the same regardless of which backup technology you choose.
Yes but my point was more about the reliance on older back ups. So even if the technology was till accessible the information to use it might no longer exist.
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BryanFazekas wrote:
I doubt that this situation is exactly by design, as the accounts affected are not ones that have been dormant for 2+ years
There is an old story from the Computing Center at the University of Copenhagen, around 1970 (so, no URL reference to the event :-)). Clocks with battery backup were not common. After a power failure, the operator had to type in the current date and time of day on the system console. It happened that the operator mistyped the year without discovering that he missed by a decade. Before the mistake was discovered, they had run the cleanup program that deleted all files that hadn't been touched for six months. There is an interesting 'Part 2' to this story: Disk space was terribly expensive in those days, so all large data sets were kept on 1/2" magnetic tape. The cleanup program didn't wipe the tapes. But ... Standard tape formats, used when exchanging data with other installations, contained complete metadata for every file. Even tape was expensive, so Univac (this happed on a Univac 1100 system) had devised a format where only the data blocks were densely packed on the tape, while all metadata was maintained on disk, for fast searching for files. All this metadata was wiped by the cleanup procedure. The 'real data' was still there on tape, but on which tape? Where on that tape? Noone could tell. Our professor, when telling this story, said that a for a few very important projects, the viable tape wheel candidates had been dissected by hand, and the blocks put together, like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Fortunately, in those days, a lot of research didn't depend completely on the computer, it was more like a calculator that you picked up for specific calculations; that was all. Imagine the situation today, if the next pandemic doesn't infect humans, but the virus thrive on silicon and is capable of getting through the shields to eat every logical gate of all digital electronics on earth. I have difficulties finding a single (Western) human activity that could continue completely unaffected if that happened.
There is something else that could affect our electronic civilization that has a much higher probability, in fact more than most people think, and we will likely be ill prepared for it just like the last pandemic: Coronal Mass Ejections (CME). Put your backups in a Faraday cage! Which institutions and systems are prepared enough?
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trønderen wrote:
If, one way or the other
Yes. As noted in my reply and in the other post - EMP. That is a high altitude electromagnetic pulse. A nuclear weapon, high altitude can do this. But a solar flare can also do it. There are any number of fictional books that describe those scenarios. Some a bit more factual than others. The most significant failure is not necessarily 'personal' electronics but rather that the entire electrical system, especially power station transformers, would be fried.
The actual mechanism for knocking out our electronics is not essential to me. Some may be more sneaking in without our notice until it is too late (such as the virus alternative I suggested), others are more immediate and violent (such as an atomic bomb EMP or a devastating solar storm). Total loss of electrical power is sufficient. Imagine trying to save yourself, e.g. in a remote mountain cabin together with a gang of teenagers, with no way of charging their smartphones ... And when they find a way to do it, using the solar panels at the cabin roof, they realize that the base station to which their phone tries to connect, has no power ... That is when you regret that you didn't bring along that pile of adventure books from your grandparents' home, to read out to them for entertainment. (They probably have read too little to read the books by themselves, but anyway: Reading to a group of listeners is a great activity!)
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There is something else that could affect our electronic civilization that has a much higher probability, in fact more than most people think, and we will likely be ill prepared for it just like the last pandemic: Coronal Mass Ejections (CME). Put your backups in a Faraday cage! Which institutions and systems are prepared enough?
None. It would knock out the power supply. That alone would kill our culture within 24 hours. Our homes would turn to ice (right now, my outdoors temperature is 12.4 Celsius below freezing, 10 F). We couldn't charge our cars. Our smartphones would go dead within a day or two. We couldn't charge our portables, and even with a diesel generator to power our desktop PC, the concentrator for our fiber internet connection, or maybe the local ISP itself, is dead from lack of power. The food in your freezer and fridge would rot - sooner in summertime than in winter, so what would you prefer: Freeze to death, or starve to death? What about your 'social' contacts, the socalled 'social' media?` What kind of entertainment would you have available? Could you read a book in the winter evening? (And: Do you have a book? :-)) Your local plant for filtering your drinking water probably depends on a huge amount of electricity. Expect it to close down. Same with your waste water / sour processing plant. Expect it to close down. If you want to look at your own electricity dependencies alone, disregarding things such as water supply and wastewater processing: Why don't you tonight, this Friday night, abruptly turn OFF your main electric switch (maybe you don't have a switch but you can unscrew the main fuses) without making any preparations at all. Leave the main switch off (or main fuses unscrewed) until Sunday night 8 days from now, and then tell how well you and your family fared. And how you did it, in which ways you compensated for the lack of electricity. I don't think very many families would dare to take up this challenge. And I believe that at least half of those who dared to, would ask for at least one day to prepare for it - have all their batteries charged, their gas tanks filled up etc. Very few of us are anywhere close to prepared for such an event.