Episode
The Death of the 3-2-1 Rule: Enter 3-2-1-1-0
- Podcast
- The Backup Wrap-Up
- Published
- Dec 1, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 1865
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://www.backupwrapup.com/death-of-321-rule-enter-32110
Actions
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Summary
The 3-2-1 rule is dead. Long live 3-2-1-1-0. For decades, the 3-2-1 rule has been the gold standard for backup strategies - three copies of your data, on two different media, with one copy somewhere else. But ransomware killed it. Not because the fundamentals were wrong, but because threat actors learned to target backups specifically. In this episode, Curtis and Prasanna explain why the traditional 3-2-1 rule isn't enough anymore and what the evolution to 3-2-1-1-0 means for your backup strategy. The extra "1" stands for one immutable, air-gapped copy that attackers can't delete or encrypt. The "0" means zero failures - your backups must actually work when you need them. You'll learn why SaaS platforms don't meet the 3-2-1 rule, how to think about immutability in the cloud era, and why this upgrade isn't optional if you want to survive a ransomware attack. Our interview with Peter Krogh, the one who coined the term: https://www.backupwrapup.com/peter-krogh-who-coined-the-3-2-1-rule-on-our-podcast/