3) if you haven't successfully tried to restore it, it's not backed up.
As the old saying goes, nobody cares about backups — people care only about restores.
As the old saying goes, nobody cares about backups — people care only about restores.
If you don't test it, how do you know?
For example, one person told me he can't understand antivirus software and why people buy it, because he never got a virus. I asked him "how do you know you didn't get a virus?". He just looked at me, not saying a word. I hope my point got across though. If you aren't checking, you don't know. Same could be said about hacking these days. You secure your system, that's good, but if you don't have something to detect hackers, you are the same as the guy without antivirus and the guy without tested backups. You just have no idea whether or not you are protected.
"How do you know you didn't get a virus?"
I don't. But it's not epistemically clean to let other people set your priors for things like risk, if they have a financial interest in making you worry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucas_critique
And sadly one reason why IT is a easy department for the beancounters to downsize.