As the end of March approaches, it means World Backup Day is near – the annual reminder that if we don’t want to look the fool after data loss, we need to create secure backups. Acronis conducts a global consumer survey each year leading up to the World Backup Day celebration, to gauge the attitudes, habits and knowledge of the general public. The findings were both eye-opening and contradictory.

Late Thursday, Atlanta, Georgia was hit by a ransomware attack that ended up infecting multiple applications and devices, crippling the city’s municipal computer system. As city employees arrived at work on Friday, they were each handed a flyer telling them not to turn on their computer until the IT department had cleared their systems. In the meantime, cybercriminals were demanding $51,000 in bitcoin to return access to the ATL. The Atlanta attack is just the latest high-profile ransomware attack that should prompt everyone to review their data protection strategy – because given how fast the threat from ransomware is evolving, old defenses are proving less effective against the new threats.

For companies of all sizes, business backup software is an essential part of their security strategy. Financial, technical, and legal documents, as well as other working materials, form the basis of every business operation and must be protected. If these documents disappeared for any reason, a company would have to deal with big financial losses, if it survived at all.

As a global leader in hybrid cloud data protection and storage, Acronis is always developing or enhancing solutions designed to solve the challenges that businesses face, both today and in the future. So we asked IT Central Station to conduct a survey of North American businesses as a pulse-check on the attitudes and practices of IT professionals, system engineers, project managers and business owners regarding the backup services they require.