Step 1: What is a Data Backup Policy?

While anti-virus, firewalls, encryption, and all the various steps we take to ensure the safety of our data are valuable and fantastic ideas, it’s still not a question of if you are going to lose data, but rather a question of when. There are simply too many variables at play that could cause things to go wrong.
Preparing for “the worst” is just as important as defending against it; that is to say, you need to have a data backup policy as part of your own security plan. But what might a backup policy look like? What are its dimensions?
The first step to crafting an effective a backup policy is getting a sense of what data you have, and where it is. The Data Backup Matrix Activity & Discussion is one way of doing this; however, another way would be by making a list of the different kinds of data you maintain and where you store each kind.