Back it up, Back it up

I considered writing a ‘top ten’ list about how to keep your database safe. People like top tens – they are easy to read and digest. But when it comes down to registration database security, people would be better off just focusing on three key points:

1. Don’t have a single point of failure

Or as my Gran would say – don’t put all your eggs in one basket, by keeping your data in just one place. Backup your data and do it regularly. Have copies in different places and in different formats because a single backup (even on multiple drives or tapes) is still a single point of failure. Have an online version and one off-line too - there’s nothing wrong with a simple print out of your reg data. If your data company had a ‘JCB error’ (the sort of major problem caused by a JCB digging through a cable) then make sure that there are no barriers between you and your data. We provide a hosting environment for our client’s registration data, but we use multiple servers and even multiple ISPs because you never know when an ISP will go down. We store backups in different physical locations too – so even if our building burnt down, our backups are safe. But, just having stuff all over the place doesn’t make a good backup policy.

2. Make sure you can get to the other copies

Your laptop gets stolen, but its OK; you have copies of your data backed up in the cloud. You just need to log in… but the password is stored on the stolen laptop. People may say that lightning doesn’t strike twice, but I assume it will. And again. And again. If your event registration provider failed on the morning of your event, it’s fair to assume you would be a tad stressed, and that stress could very well lead to mistakes and rushed actions – such as leaving your laptop in the back of a taxi.

But remember, there is no cloud – it’s just some body else’s computer. OneDrive (the Microsoft cloud) failed last week – leaving thousands (even millions?) of customers unable to get to their data. It was down for less than 24 hours but, imagine if that was on the day of your event. LastPass is a great way to store all of your passwords, but consider the worst, could you get at your backups if that failed too?

3. Make sure the backups have been tested to prove that they work

The thing with backups though, is that no-one actually knows if they have worked until they are needed, and by then it could be too late. Last month, Orbit, makers of an app for professional childcare services, informed its customers that it lost all of their data during a weekend site upgrade – before discovering their backups hadn't been working for a year. Orbit describes itself as "a secure website" which provides "the Orbit Early Years app for Early Years Providers and Practitioners" available through Apple's App Store. The app is free but contains advertising directed at nursery managers and carers of pre-school children. Ahead of the new school year, Orbit updated its website. To implement the new site it tried to populate the new and pristine set-up from its backup database of providers' details. Unfortunately, it was at this point that "it was discovered the database backup had not been working properly over the past 12 months." Ouch.

Restore your backups regularly to make sure they have worked – which means either a complete restore to a test server or a partial file restore to prove the integrity of the backup. Make sure someone in your organisation is responsible for testing that the backups are working and is providing reports of those successes to management.

So, backup your data, test your backups and know how to get to them. Make sure that if the worst happened, you can still get to your reg data and run your event. In the world of data, it pays to be a pessimist.

This column was originally published in Exhibition News