Ok, it sucks, losing data always sucks, but what ever happened to the 3-2-1 backup rule? even if your off site backup provider goes tits up, your on site backup is still there.
If you don't want on site, a second off site provider, 50TB on backblaze would be an extra ~$350 per month (prob less if they were to commit to capacity instead of using their PAYG service)
It's worth noting that PBS affiliates are non-profits that have fairly constrained budgets, especially now that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been dissolved due to DOGE.
Non-profit IT has always seemed, to me at least, to be a land of compromises. There's rarely enough money, knowledge, or time to do things "the right way", so you have to do the best you can. If I could only choose one backup to have, it'd be remote on a provider like Iron Mountain. It would seem as if they are storing things on Iron Mountain through an intermediary company, who may or may not have actually paid the bill.
So, y'know, fraud's a possibility here.
> but what ever happened to the 3-2-1 backup rule?
I wasn't 100% sure, but the data backs this up[0]; the "3-2-1 backup rule" is a relatively modern concept, at least by that name. I also remember things like "have one backup in one place, another in another place" since before this mnemonic, but I feel like it's unfair to judge a 70+ years archive on something that just recently actually became a widespread mantra.
- [0] Interestingly, Ngram (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=%5B3-2-1+backu...) says ~2010 while Trends (https://trends.google.com/explore?q=3-2-1%2520backup%2520rul...) says slow build up from ~2020, guess "everyday" language would sit somewhere around those two different truths.