Stolen laptop contains cancer research data

I wouldn't be surprised if the owner _deliberately_ didn't create backups.

I used to work in academia. Some of the academics I knew were extremely paranoid about anybody (including SysAdmins) accessing their research. They would go to great lengths to to keep their work away from the "prying eyes of the university" (a phrase someone used once). This meant not allowing any access to their personal desktops, laptops, etc. Admins worked around the personal desktop issue by refusing to help them with the inevitable problems unless they got access. But laptops were a different story.

It was a Mac, which most likely came with Time Machine - all she had to do was connect a USB drive (as far as I remember, OS X even asks if you want to use the drive for backups) and she would have had automatic versioned backups.

To be honest, I think most people need backing data up scared into them (e.g., I nearly lost a college project due a HD failure, and now I have multiple redundant backups).

I'm sick of this attitude of "Always be super nice and make sure you over mother your users" crap. You know what: If my car engine seizes because I haven't changed the oil, no one tells the car makers or the mechanics they didn't do thier job right. If I leave the oven on all night and get CO poisoning, no one blames the oven maker for it. If someone doesn't buy renter's insurance we don't blame the apartment owner for them losing their net-worth.

PCs have been almost ubiquitous for 20 years now. For my entire freaking life I have been hearing about how "you need to back up your data". We have consistently made better and better backup tools, like mozy, or backblaze. Yet somehow it is our fault some idiot decided "It won't happen to me!". At some point, we just have to have the users be a tiny little baby step of a bit responsible for their stuff too. Just like accounting makes people responsible for their inventory and expense reports. Just like HR makes people responsible for their own insurance stuff. Sure they help, but crap - people need to be a little grown up in their lives and actions.

Just because this person did not bother to find out about backups from her IT does not make it ITs problem. Hell, you don't even know if there was or wasn't the ability for backups in place. Most university IT shops have lots and lots of capacity and backup options in place -- and they are documented, they just don't force users to do it. You know why? Sanctimonious asshats come from the other direction then, complaining not about how IT must mother the employees, but instead must back off the draconian rules to make users feel more welcome.

tl; dr -- Users should be held to some standard of responsibility and IT is damned when they do and when they don't.

Hear Hear, true for nonprofits as well, in my mind perhaps even more so, as they exist for the public trust.

I got some fire and ire, restricting users software choices and tools, as it was a zoo before. It is too bad, I dont want to restrict anybody, but to maintain the integrity of the organization information, offer reliability and keep cost low, choices and policy have to be enforced.

Every desktop folder and user folder is synced to a server, restrictions on personal data stores are monitored, and enforced. critical data is copied to an onsite and offsite datastore. I am met with some dissatisfaction by more advanced users at times, but when their desktop/laptop gets fucked (3 year avg for laptop harddrive it seems) login on to a spare and having your desktop just the way you left it, is a huge relief for users.

and we are just a museum, we are not solving the worlds most dire problems.