On the Effectiveness of End-Users' Data Backup Practices Against Data Corruption
Conference
Rampersaud, L, Ousat, B, Brown, C et al. (2025). On the Effectiveness of End-Users' Data Backup Practices Against Data Corruption
. 532-541. 10.1109/IEMCON67450.2025.11381261
Rampersaud, L, Ousat, B, Brown, C et al. (2025). On the Effectiveness of End-Users' Data Backup Practices Against Data Corruption
. 532-541. 10.1109/IEMCON67450.2025.11381261
Rampersaud, L; Ousat, B; Brown, C; Uluagac, S; Kharraz, A
abstract
With the rising threat of data loss, data backup has become an important part of defense mechanisms. Data corruption attacks such as ransomware have become more consequential when victims cannot retrieve their data and are more likely to pay the ransom fee. In this study, we evaluate end-users' readiness in protecting their data and potential issues with their data protection plans. We investigate how users protect their data and what their data recovery plans look like. We identified some contradictory and surprising findings. For instance, we observed that many users were confused about who was responsible for data protection. Only 57 (11.6%) of the participants reported that data protection is a user's responsibility. We asked participants to give a dollar value on how much their data might be worth. While 4 (0.8%) reported values of more than one million and 114 (23.1%) reported less than $100, 233 (47.3%) participants believed that their data was worth at least $1,000. However, 103 (20.9%) of those participants did not use any viable backup solution to protect their data.
