Canon's cloud platform has lost users' files and can't restore them

Post by henvic » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #53

henvic wrote: post #36

Everyone should be looking for a backup strategy that involves at least a hot backup and a cold backup, with some sort of offline validation. However this is easier said than done (because now you've to deal with multiple file systems, decisions about cryptography, lack of interest in creating something that you hope you'll never need, and so on). I wish there was a service (and don't tell me about Backblaze because…

I have a multi-dimensional backup strategy, which includes “cloudy” backups of my most important assets, using services like GitHub, local hourly NAS (Synology double-redundant RAID-like) incremental backups of my whole system, and running “hot” backups of my system and development volumes; automatically updated every four hours (or on-demand. It's a bootable CCC clone). I seldom need to use anything more than my “ho…

Post by mumblemumble » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 1:29 PM UTC

lukevp wrote: post #232

ibeckermayer wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the difference between replication and backups? Is the distinction that backups must be stored on separate infrastructure, whereas replication might still be 1 or 2 points of failure?

Replication is about having data level redundancy to protect from drive failure. Backups are about having point in time snapshots of the system state, and about having them tiered from a location perspective. The 3-2-1[1] principle says to have 3 total copies, 2 of which are local but on different devices, and 1 of which is offsite. This gives you tiers of recoverability. It’s important from a backup perspective that…

Post by CydeWeys » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

xnyan wrote: post #224

galoisgirl wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as lack of risk in this world. When a restaurant takes your reservation for Friday night, there's a 0.00001% (or so) risk that they will burn down on Thursday or that half the staff will get heart attacks or something. Should they not do reservations at all?

If they don't have a working smoke alarm, or are storing flammable materials over the burner, or don't have enough emergency exits then no, they should not do reservations at all. It seems Canon did not have a backup, they had replication of data. If you are storing data for money, then this is a professionally negligent behavior. Not being able to prepare for everything is not an valid excuse to not prepare for what…

Post by SAI_Peregrinus » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 1:37 PM UTC

ibeckermayer wrote: post #226

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #206

This sounds to me like the classic “replication is not backups” situation where (at best) all of the user files were stored in RAID array someplace and that is what the malware ate. If there had been actual backups and effective backups then it should have been trivial to restore non-corrupted files. It also sounds like someone made the decision not to backup the raw images because they were “big” - that is actually…

What’s the difference between replication and backups? Is the distinction that backups must be stored on separate infrastructure, whereas replication might still be 1 or 2 points of failure?

Post by virgilp » Tue, Aug 18, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #192

virgilp wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They obviously do have _some_ backups (since were able to restore all videos and all photos - but not all photos at the original resolution). In the end it's all a tradeoff... ignoring cost, we all know what to do to get pretty safe storage. But how much are you really willing to pay, per month, for that safety?

> since were able to restore all videos and all photos - but not all photos at the original resolution "Canon has said that there is no technical measure to restore lost video files, but that photo files can be restored – albeit not at their original resolution."