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Elsewhere in this issue (beginning on page 16 to be precise) you will find a sad but true story of how the theft of a backup server delivered a very serious blow to a company's record-keeping and information technology system.

While the article relates how the physical removal of a piece of equipment dominoed into the discovery of other faults in the company's method of backing up crucial data, sometimes it's the simplest piece of equipment — such as a CD or a DVD disc — that can fail without warning. Whether it's a thousand-dollar server or a 25-cent plastic disc, most of us have too much to lose by not having a backup to our backup systems.

We speak of our own experience with some of our backed-up data. We back up every file of every issue of ANSOM to DVDs. We keep these discs in a storage album.

Despite the oft-stated claims that recordable DVDs will maintain their data integrity for over a hundred years, it's amazing how the tiniest scratch, grease mark, fingerprint or ink stain will render a disc unreadable. It has happened to us.

While an issue is in progress, there is the low but ever-present risk of a calamitous computer crash, in which an issue nearing completion could be lost. Admittedly, we've relied more on luck than sound safety procedures in avoiding that scenario to date.

Maybe there should be a National Back-Up-Your-Computer Month, by government decree. I know it would get my vote.