Ask some questions about your back-up status

News that a hacking attack on web hosting provider Distribute.IT had led to the destruction of almost 5000 websites kept me up last night.

As the head of Taskmaster Enterprises, I am generally too busy to worry about tech matters. As long as the computer works and I can play a few games of Solitaire in the afternoon (just kidding) then I am pretty happy.

But the incident at Distribute.IT made me realise just how little I understand about how out IT systems actually work. So this morning I marched in an asked the following questions:

• If our data hosting provider was hacked, what would happen to our site?
• How is our data backed up?
• How many back-ups have we got?
• What happens if the back-up fails?
• What happens if the back-up to the back-up fails?

My IT guys had all the answers ready to go. It was almost like they expected me to read the story and come running.

If you’re IT people can’t answer these questions, or you don’t like the answers they give, then you need to act very quickly.

Get it done – today!