Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: “But Curtis, my cloud provider offers geo-redundancy and multi-region replication. Isn’t that enough?” Ask UniSuper how that worked out for them. Google accidentally deleted their entire cloud environment across multiple regions. If it wasn’t for UniSuper’s third-party backups, they would have been up the proverbial creek without a paddle.
Lastly, let’s talk about the human element. Many of these disasters, like the Code Spaces hack or the Musey Google account deletion, came down to human error or poor security practices. It’s a stark reminder that no matter how sophisticated your cloud infrastructure is, your data is only as secure as your weakest link. Educate your team, implement strong access controls and security measures, and always, always have a tested incident response plan.
I want to reiterate something I said earlier. In this list of 10 cloud disasters, only one company came out unscathed, and it’s the one that had a tested third-party backup of its cloud data. If that isn’t enough to convince you to do it, I don’t know what will.
The cloud is an incredibly powerful tool, but it’s not a silver bullet for data protection. Trust, but verify. Back up your data like your business depends on it because it does. Learn from the misfortunes of others and don’t let your organization become another cautionary tale. Remember, there are two types of people in this world: those who have lost data and those who will. Make sure you’re prepared for when that day comes.
