How I do backups: rsync is my friend :)

There are many many fancy backup programs out there, that have all sorts of cool features. I remember, a long time ago, using ntbackup (which saved my bacon and that of the business I worked for at the time), and later Backup Exec. Of course, now, there's cloud cloud cloud all over the place.. What if, however, you just want to backup from one place to another without a subscription fee?

Well, it took awhile, and the script's evolved over time, but I presently use rsync for backups. In conjunction with a filesystem that supports hard links, I can store date stamped copies of a given source, where the backup disk only stores changed files between copies, saving disk space - but all the files are ready for direct access within their respective directory heirarchies.

Your mileage may vary, you may indeed find fancier scripts, but this one works for me :)

Protecting against ransomware - is this possibly a different way of thinking about it in the SOHO space?

Recently my folks got an email from their ISP (Westnet) scaring them, thinking they'd been hacked (it turns out an old Westnet user database had been compromised, along with cleartext usernames and passwords... oopsies?).

Before I figured out what it was, I was thinking suspicious activity had been detected on their accounts and was worried about whether or not they'd backed up recently... then my thoughts turned to cryptoware and how it basically spreads out to whatever it touches and encrypts everything (had someone else hit by a bug recently - and I'm moving them and their formerly Windows XP computer to Lubuntu as they only need Windowsish looking email, web browsing and printing).

Anyway.. long setup aside, I was thinking, that perhaps the best way to deal with backups and cryptoware, was to have the system that needed to be backed up make itself available to an authorised backup storage provider by some restricted and secured means (over a LAN or encrypted link). That backup storage provider could be prodded by the client system to perform a pull, but the client would never have direct, unrestricted access to the backup server's archives.