A backup you've never restored from is a guess.

A backup you've never restored from is a guess.

This year's small business survey from the National Cybersecurity Alliance and CISA asked 1,000 business leaders about it. Eighty-eight percent have backups. Only 61% have tested them. That leaves more than a quarter counting on a copy nobody has checked.

Confidence runs ahead of that. Fifty-nine percent said they were highly confident they could recover quickly from a day or more offline.

One more pattern in the report is worth noticing. Businesses that had already been breached were more likely to have tested their backups, 70% against 54%. Most owners learn how their backup works on the worst possible day to learn it.

The test doesn't have to be big. Pick one folder of job records and last week's invoices. Restore them to a different machine. Time it, and write down who did it and what didn't come back.

If it takes an afternoon, that's the number to plan around. If it doesn't work, a quiet morning is a much better time to find out.

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