The 3-2-1 rule to the rescue!

So now that I’ve terrified you, what can you actually do about it? This chapter will outline the solution at its highest level, and then in the next chapter we’ll start putting things into practice.

We have a list of requirements from the last chapter, the things we need our backup to do:

• Our backup needs to have some sort of ability to go back in time and view old versions of our files.
• Our backup needs to be safe from the failure of our main computer.
• Our backup needs to be somewhere else - not somewhere it can be wiped out along with the computer.
• Our backup needs to be malware-resistant - it must be impossible for ransomware to wipe it out along with our computer.

To this I’m going to add even more requirements:

• Our backup needs to be easy to use - there’s no point having something you can’t figure out.
• Our backup needs to be impossible to forget to do - ideally it’s automatic so you never need to think about it again.
• Our backup needs to cost less than $10 billion. OK, that one’s easy but we do want it to be as cheap as possible, while still offering a level of security many of the companies affected by ransomware would envy.

I hear you now: “I thought you said this was going to be simple!” It is, I promise. I just wanted to show you the threats we face, so you can have confidence that the backups we make will protect you properly.

Hopefully from the previous chapter you can see that anything you only have one copy of is at risk. Whether you screw up the editing, delete it accidentally or something happens to the laptop, it can be gone in seconds.

Related to that, anything you only have in one place is also at risk. If your hard drive or laptop die, it’s no good having seventeen copies of your magnum opus in various folders, they'll all be gone. The same is true if you have a USB drive with a backup on it, which you keep in the pocket of your backpack - if someone snatches that, it's all gone.

Even having an external disk that you plug in whenever you want to do a backup isn’t ideal - any malware will just encrypt that too.

In the IT circles in which I used to travel there’s a rule of thumb to follow when it comes to backups. The 3-2-1 rule states that you should have:

Three copies of anything important, on two different media, one of which is off-site.

(Off-site is just a techie way of saying ‘not here’).

The first copy is the one you’re working on, your masterpiece in progress on your laptop or PC hard drive. You already have that of course! Not so fast, that’s the original - we still need a copy. At the very least you can do ‘File -> Save As…’ and make a new version every now and then - that way you have a history you can go back through. In the next chapter I’ll show you how to have the computer do that for you without you needing to remember.

So we need two more copies…

During the introduction I had you make a copy to a USB stick - that’s your second copy. And since it’s not on the same hard drive as the first copy, that’s the second media covered too! For bonus points, put it on your keyring with your house keys so it’s not in your laptop bag. That way if the bag goes missing at least your backup didn’t. It’s not ideal, you still have to remember to do it - so in a later chapter we’ll automate that too.

Two down, one to go…

The final copy should be ‘off-site’. This one’s a little trickier, but you could post another USB stick to a trusted friend, or put it in a cloud service. There are some pitfalls with this approach, and so the following chapters will help you avoid them.

So there we are!

1. Your masterpiece in progress, on your laptop or desktop hard drive.
2. A history of previous versions, also on the same computer.
3. A recent backup on a USB stick, in case you accidentally delete the master copy.
4. A recent backup somewhere safe that isn't your house. An online / cloud-based backup is ideal for this, as is sending another USB stick to your friend to look after.

You see how this works - if something happens to the file you’re editing, you have plenty of other copies to rely on. If your backpack or laptop bag goes walkabout you have a USB backup to fall back to. And even in the worst imaginable case, your house goes up in flames and you lose everything - you have still got a copy at your friend’s place.

As with everything in life, backups are a trade-off. In most cases you’re trading security against convenience - for example you could print out your manuscript every day, drive three towns over and lock it in a fireproof safe. I’d trust that to be very secure, but it’s hardly a convenient process to do, and if you ever need to rely on it then typing it all back in is hardly a good experience.

With the 3-2-1 approach, you can get the best of all worlds. A convenient, local, easy to use backup will work just fine most of the time, while if the absolute worst happens, you may have a little more work to do in order to get your stuff back - but not much!

In the next chapter, we’ll start putting all this together and I’ll show you the actual steps to follow to set this all up. More importantly I’ll show you how to automate it so you never have to think about it again.