Lion Cipher Lab
Make a backup — and actually test the restore
- Cyber / Security Engineer
- Beginner
- ~30 min
- Free · no account required
Why it matters
Everything you have that only exists in one place — photos, coursework, tax records, a project — is one dead drive, one stolen laptop, or one ransomware infection away from gone. Backups are the single most reliable defense against all three, and the only defense that lets you ignore a ransom demand entirely: if you have a clean, offline copy, encrypted files are an annoyance, not a catastrophe. But a backup is worthless until you have restored from it at least once, and most people never do — they discover on the worst day of the year that the backup was empty, corrupt, or unreadable. This…
What you'll learn
- 3-2-1 backup rule
- making real backups
- testing a restore
- verifying file integrity with hashes
- ransomware resilience
Steps in this lab
- A backup you've never restored is only a hope
- The 3-2-1 rule, in plain English
- Pick a real folder and make a real backup
- Fingerprint an original file before you trust anything
- Now the part everyone skips: restore from the backup
- Prove the restored file is bit-for-bit intact
- Make one copy offline — the copy ransomware can't touch
- The habit, not the one-off