> If various staff members created a few weeks (or even months) worth of work on storage that isn't backed up, then the response from mgmt would generally be "B

> If various staff members created a few weeks (or even months) worth of work on storage that isn't backed up, then the response from mgmt would generally be "Bad luck, you'll need to redo it". Thinking of them as "staff" is the thing. If the random grad student is doing the work the pi really needs done, and deadlines are approaching, then other people's reputations are suddenly on the line. And maybe there's a deadline for a grant that would bring in millions that couldn't be met without that data. Would you pay a million now for much more grant funding? And maybe that ransom money simply comes out of a different financial pot, but the purse strings are loosened for an important faculty member. Maybe the faculty member is hugely important but runs their own shop for vanity reasons, (which the it department really hates, by the way), but when the faculty member gets in trouble he can pull rank and raid the it department budget for the ransom. The incentives and power structures in these organizations are complex. And the egos are huge.