BackupAssist's Newsletter for June 2015 View this email in your browser
     

The Backup Tribune

June 2015

Want to improve your backups?
 We look back at 6 best practices we've discussed

About this time last year, we released a blog article that outlined 6 basic tips that anyone and everyone can follow to help ensure their backups are best practice.

Just in case you're a new customer, or you just happened to miss these handy hints the first time around, we think it's worth taking the time go over them again.

  1. Check your backup reports
     
  2. Perform manual test restores regularly
     
  3. Include archival backups in your schedule
     
  4. Simulate disaster recoveries
     
  5. Use different backup types
     
  6. Take special care with iSCSI and NAS devices

Want some more detail about each of these steps? Want to know why these are best practices?  Check out the blog article by clicking here

Riddles In The Dark


How did you go with last month's riddle? In case you didn't figure it out, the answer was:

A keyboard!

A shout-out to Greg S. from Texas, who was the first person in with the correct answer on Twitter.

Ready to go again?

I reside within thieves,
Leading vile and villainous alike.
But while I'm at ease in depravity,
You can't be divine without me.
In excess I'm a server, well, virtually.
Don't forget I'm the center of gravity.
What am I?


Just like last month, if you think you know the answer then go right ahead and tweet it @BackupAssist with #RecoveredARiddle.

Your Reading List This Month

Important BackupAssist Update Released


Late last month Microsoft released some security updates that caused an unforeseen issue with manually creating BackupAssist jobs for some users.

As soon as we heard of this issue, our developers jumped on the situation and released updates to all supported versions of BackupAssist to correct it.  

These updates are available for BackupAssist v8, v7.4.6 and v7.5.

To find out more about the issue, what caused it, and how you can download the Update to correct it, read this article.

Some Food for Thought on Ditching Tape


As time goes on, more and more businesses are considering moving away from tape.  There are a lot of advantages to be had from making this transition.  Nobody will argue that.

However, what you may not hear about so often are the potential downsides.  At the very least, these are definitely worth taking into account before making any binding decisions.

This month, we examined the pros and cons of ditching tape equally.

Here's some food for thought.

Weapons of Choice - File vs Image Backups


'What backup type should I be using?'

It's a question that our support teams hear a lot. Well, in general, the answer is almost always going to be System Protection - the imaging backup type in BackupAssist.

However, there are circumstances where File Protection and File Archiving will play their part too.

This month, we looked the difference between image-level and file-level backups, and when you should incorporate each type into your backup strategy.

Check it out.

News From The Tech World

Fresh Installs of Free Windows 10 Licenses Allowed


Microsoft's Gabe Aul confirmed on Twitter this month that once a user has taken advantage of the free Windows 10 upgrade on offer, they will be able to do fresh installs of the OS at any time - even after the 1 year free period has expired.

However, questions surrounding Microsoft's pledge to offer free upgrades of Windows 10 for the 'supported lifetime' of hardware still remain.

More info here.



 

Hospital Drug Pumps Could Be Hacked


As if the things hackers can do weren't concerning enough already...

Security researcher, Billy Rios, reported this month that he has discovered a vulnerability in some hospital drug pumps that could allow a hacker to remotely administer a potentially lethal dose to a patient.

This vulnerability could potentially be exploited by anyone accessing a hospital's network.

Here are the details.

Go Robot, Go!


The finals for the annual DARPA Robotics Challenge were held this month, with a South Korean team surging to victory and a $2m prize.

The focus this year was on disaster scenarios, with the robots having to complete an obstacle course simulating the challenges a robot might encounter as a first responder to a natural disaster.

Read more here.

 

It's Google, But More...

Add BackupAssist to your Google+ Circles


So you're a Google+ type of person? Great! In our opinion, it's a highly underrated social network.

There's a lot of great content shared on Google+, and BackupAssist is proud to contribute to it.

We share all of our blog articles and the latest news and releases to our Google+ Circles.

So if you're on Google+, add us to your Circle!

Let's connect