Workstation Backups

Owned by Johnson Nguyen
Last updated: Jan 06, 2022
1 min read

We encourage every staff member to set up off-site backups as a mechanism to recover from such events as catastrophic failures, device theft, or to minimize impact from cryptolocker ransomware. Backing up to local media (e.g. external hard drives) using Time Machine of similar OS-specific solutions is not sufficient to be fully immune from such events, so please set up and use the recommended off-site backup software.

Mac and Windows

The recommended software for off-site backups is Arq Backup (https://arqbackup.com):

  1. It is a one-time expense without any recurring fees
  2. It can use the Linux Foundation Google Drive as the backup target
    1. Since we have unlimited storage, this means there are unlimited backups
  3. The backups are encrypted on your workstation before they are sent to remote storage
    1. Neither Google nor Linux Foundation administrators can access your private data

Expensing Arq Backup

You can expense your Arq Backup purchase by submitting your receipt via Expensify. Please use the "Software" category in your expense report.

Write down your encryption passphrase

As stated, neither Google nor Linux Foundation administrators can access your private data once it is encrypted with your chosen passphrase. It is important that you do not lose the passphrase you used. Please write it down and store somewhere that is likely to survive major disaster events. The helpdesk personnel will not be able to help you restore access to your backups if you lose that encryption passphrase.

Linux

The IT group has the guide for configuring your workstation for local and remote Google Drive backups using free software tools. You can find it here: