New Windows operating system has no business backup benefit
Private users don’t take data backup as seriously as they should and it seems that years of industry warnings aren’t making any ground in the battle for data continuity there. Businesses also seem to be lacking in some of their backup tape management strategy, either lacking a completely protected portfolio or using ambiguous services like cloud technology that aren’t as reliable.
Microsoft recently stepped in and decided that it would forcibly fill that gap for users of its new operating system, Windows 8, which seems to have been designed specifically for corporate use. The problem is the features added to try and assist with business continuity actually aren’t up to high enough standard for most companies to use.
A recent blog by Microsoft featured a discussion with programming manager Bohdan Raciborski who said that one of the primary security features in the new OS is called File History, a facility that regularly backs up information to an external storage device at regular intervals set by the computer user. While this may sound like a useful addition to backup tape management, there is nothing about FH that is enterprise-ready.
“File History may not comply with…company security, access, and retention policies,” Raciborski said in the blog. His solution for corporate users is to simply disable the feature completely, begging the question of why Microsoft added it in the first place. There’s also the concern that it could leave a gap for hackers to slip in if they can get into a system or install a bug that could activate the program and write to a mirrored drive somewhere within the cloud.
On the bright side, File History does promote on-site backup tape strategies by not partnering with any cloud services of its own. Not only would it result in higher costs for entities that are already maintaining their own files, it also initiates an additional risk to data security, so Microsoft doesn’t even connect FH to SkyDrive.
So despite Microsoft trying to engineer better enterprise-level solutions, the company has basically admitted that Windows 8 did not achieve that at all in terms of security and business continuity protection. The best option for businesses might be to ignore the upgrade and keep using technology solutions they have in place now.