On the eve of World Backup Day and with stories like the Atlanta ransomware attack still in the news, now is a great time to revisit your backup strategy. It's also a great time for us to announce some great new features that we're getting ready to deliver as a free update to CCC 5 users – features that will help you improve your defenses against ransomware and malware.
Versioned backups with APFS Snapshots
CCC 5.1 offers support for point-in-time restores by leveraging the snapshot feature of Apple's new APFS filesystem. CCC's SafetyNet feature offered similar functionality to this in the past, but snapshots take it to a new level, allowing you to do things like restore a previous version of the OS and older versions of your Photos library.
CCC is also the first comprehensive snapshot management utility for macOS. Browsing the contents of any snapshot is just a click away, and should you want to delete a specific snapshot (whether created by CCC or Time Machine), just select it and press the Delete key. How much space are those snapshots consuming? CCC can tell you that. No other utility offers this much insight into your APFS volumes' snapshots!

CCC 5.1 is currently available for beta testing. If you're the beta-software-testing type, check the "Inform me of beta updates" box in the Software Update section of CCC's Preferences window, then click the "Check for updates now" button if you would like to try it out.
Learn more about how you can add snapshot support to your backup strategy
Read-only snapshots offer great protection against ransomware
Snapshots are read-only copies of your volume. Not only is it impossible to modify the content of those snapshots, but it’s also not possible to delete those snapshots without a special entitlement granted by Apple. What that means is that malware and ransomware can't delete your snapshots. So if you were somehow affected by ransomware and it started encrypting your files, you could remove the ransomware, then restore your files from the snapshot. CCC backups could literally save you thousands of dollars!
What can I do to make sure my backup strategy is going to be effective?
I have four general tips: make backups to a locally-attached hard drive, keep it current, keep it encrypted, keep it unmounted.
Make backups to a locally-attached hard drive
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