Workstation Data Backup is a critical service provided by the ICT unit to reduce the risk of data loss in the event of an event such as, a computer crash, loss/theft of a computer, etc.  Backup is mandatory for institutional devices, to comply with security and audit requirements.

In the interest of securing your data, we have in the last few weeks deployed a backup solution (Symantec) on all institutional windows computers. Following are some details regarding this service, to increase your level of awareness and to allow you to make best use of the service.

1. About the backup service

• Data on your workstation hard drive is backed up to the institutes central backup server.
• This can be confirmed by the presence of this icon , on the task bar at the bottom right of your home screen.
• The backup first stores all designated data and then after this only captures additions, changes and deletions of data

2. What is backed up?

• Your Windows Profile (Documents, Desktop, and Favorites)
• Microsoft Outlook Personal folders
• Drive D and Drive E for computers that have these drives

3. What is NOT backed up?

• Photos, Music and videos of all kinds are NOT backed up.  In case you have any official photos, music or videos, you should save them in your unit shared network folders provided
• If you have any personal information that you don’t  want to be backed up, create a subfolder in your ‘Drive D’ and name it ”personal”. This will be exempted from the back up

4. When does backup occur?

• The software is already installed on your computer and starts automatically whenever the computer is started.
• Currently the program performs backups and restores when the computer is connected to the organization’s network

5. Confidentiality – Is your data accessible by others?

• The backup process encrypts data at the storage location.
• The data can only be decrypted and restored with the user account associated with the backup.

6. Monitoring your back up service status

We encourage staff to routinely check and monitor the status of their data backup to ensure consistent running of the service and hence allow successful restoration your data in the event of an incident resulting in the data loss.

Below are ways to monitor:

• The Symantec DLO Icon

Absence of the DLO icon    at the system tray is an indication that the back is not running on your machine. Please contact the ICT service Desk at servicedesk@cgiar.org or Ext. 5000.

• The Backup Status View

From the task bar click on the DLO agent icon  and select “Open Desktop Agent…” This will provide the status view. This view allows you to view backup jobs that may be running on your computer.

Where back up is completed, there will be no jobs listed in the status view. Where a backup is currently running the status view should indicate that “A Job is running” and show the name of the job. Where jobs are listed, and the status reads “Back up pending” please contact the ICT service Desk at servicedesk@cgiar.org or Ext. 5000.

• The Backup Selections View

The Backup Selections allows you to view the folders and files that have been selected for back up from your computer to the backup server. Only the drives and folders with a checkmark (ticked() are selected to be backed up. Checkboxes which are shaded in dark grey indicate that only some sub items are selected and expanding the folder will show the specific ones selected. In case there are folders/files based on the criteria above that you expect to be on backup and are not selected, please contact the ICT service Desk at servicedesk@cgiar.org or Ext. 5000.

In case of any queries or assistance please contact the ICT servicedesk at servicedesk@cgiar.org, EXT: 5000

Stephe Dean – ICRAF/ILRI Head of ICT