Why educators and students need to back up critical academic data

I ndia’s education sector faces an average of 8,487 cyberattacks per week, according to data from Check Point Research (CPR) 2026. Yet, conversations with students and faculty reveal a striking disconnect: everyone knows backups matter, almost nobody maintains them. This gap between awareness and action creates an invisible crisis across Indian campuses. Research papers get lost. Dissertations disappear. Years of fieldwork evaporate. Increasingly, ransomware attackers deliberately target educational institutions primarily because their backup practices are weak and they are easy targets.