WORLD BACKUP DAY SPOTLIGHTS CORPORATE DATA WEAKNESSES AMID RISING CYBER THREATS

Businesses are being urged to reassess their data protection strategies as cyber threats intensify and operational vulnerabilities persist across corporate systems, exposing organisations to mounting financial and reputational risk.

The warning comes as World Backup Day on 31 March draws attention to the fragility of digital infrastructure at a time of heightened geopolitical tension and increasingly sophisticated cyber activity. For many organisations, however, the greatest risks remain closer to home — rooted in inadequate backup processes, ageing hardware and human error.

Roy Shelton, Group CEO of managed service provider Connectus Business Solutions, said many businesses underestimate both the likelihood and impact of data loss, often assuming existing safeguards are sufficient until a failure occurs.

“The conflict in the Middle East has emboldened state-backed bad actors in terms of looking for high-profile targets to attack, but there are many other risks associated with unprotected data,” he said. “Losing proprietary code that has been worked on for months or years could be disastrous if it has not been backed up, but there are many other areas of data security that would be worth reviewing.”

Recent data highlights the scale of the issue. Around 21 per cent of individuals have never backed up their data, while nearly a third of data loss incidents are attributed to accidental deletion. At the same time, as many as one in five PCs are infected with malware each year — a figure that underscores the persistent threat landscape facing organisations of all sizes.

Despite growing awareness of cyber risk, Shelton argues that gaps in execution remain widespread, particularly within backup systems that may appear functional but fail under scrutiny.

“You may well make some surprising discoveries if you look at if and how important business records, documents and multimedia files are backed up,” he said. “You may find that you are at risk of hardware failure if you are backing up to old equipment. You may even find that existing backup processes are not actually working as they should due to human error.”

The implications extend beyond operational disruption. In sectors where intellectual property, customer data or proprietary systems are central to value creation, data loss can have material consequences for competitiveness and compliance.

To mitigate these risks, Shelton advocates for a structured approach to data resilience, including adherence to the widely recognised “3-2-1 rule” — maintaining three copies of data, stored across two different media types, with at least one held off-site.

He also points to the increasing accessibility of enterprise-grade backup solutions. Cloud-based systems now enable automated, continuous backups with remote accessibility, while Network Attached Storage offers on-site redundancy for businesses seeking greater control over their data infrastructure. More traditional methods, such as external drives, remain viable but carry additional security considerations if not properly managed.

Alongside data backup, cyber defence remains a critical pillar. Shelton highlighted ransomware as a persistent and evolving threat, with attackers targeting organisations through increasingly sophisticated methods.

“The best way is to make sure that your systems have ransomware protection in place,” he said. “Without it, you risk your business data being effectively hijacked. Hackers will encrypt your data and demand a significant ransom payment to provide a decryption key.”

He cautioned that paying such demands offers no guarantee of recovery and may expose businesses to further extortion.

Beyond technology, Shelton emphasised the role of employee awareness in strengthening organisational resilience. Human error continues to account for a significant proportion of security breaches, often triggered by phishing attacks or inadvertent actions.

“All too often a single click on a link in an email can lead to disaster for a business,” he said. “Managers can use this date to remind staff to be cautious about data security and to encourage suggestions for improvement.”

As digital dependency deepens across industries, the cost of complacency is rising. For many organisations, World Backup Day serves less as a symbolic reminder and more as a prompt to address systemic weaknesses in how data is stored, protected and managed.

Shelton’s message is clear: resilience in an increasingly volatile digital environment depends not only on technology, but on discipline, awareness and a willingness to confront overlooked risks.