While we're discussing the importance of backups, I would like to pause for a minute to think about a common systemic failure model that simply making backups d

While we're discussing the importance of backups, I would like to pause for a minute to think about a common systemic failure model that simply making backups doesn't solve. I've realized in the past that in day-to-day situations it is more likely to lose data because of temporary programmer carelessness. Examples: deleting the backup version of a folder, deleting the copy on the wrong server, etc. This seems similar to what happened at Gitlab. How to protect oneself from this failure mode? Can we design a better system than to assume that every human command is well considered? (Sort of like guard rails, when purging backups)