---
title: "Rescuing the Video Archive After the Hack"
description: "The main server at The Cable Center was compromised. Irreplaceable oral history videos were scattered across untrusted backups. I recovered the archive — and that experience still shapes how I approach long-term digital preservation."
canonical: "https://steveknowsweb.com/blog/rescuing-the-video-archive-after-the-hack"
date: "2026-04-28"
author: "Steve Luiting"
category: "Projects"
tags: "Archives, Museums, Preservation, Crisis"
language: "en"
---
In the middle of my time at The Cable Center, their main server was compromised. It was one of those quiet crises that could have erased decades of work.

The video archive — oral histories with cable pioneers, Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, board meetings, educational programs — was scattered across drives that were no longer trustworthy. Much of it existed in only one place.

### What actually happened

I spent weeks methodically going through every backup we had. Some were on old tapes. Some were on external drives that hadn't been touched in years. A surprising amount was only on the compromised machine. I had also uploaded all of the videos from the server to YouTube as a backup and kept them private.

Bit by bit, I pulled the cleanest copies I could find and created a new, verified master archive. Those files became the only reliable versions of that material that existed for a long time.

Nobody outside a small group really knew how close we came to losing it.

### Why this still shapes how I work

That experience made me obsessive about redundancy and long-term thinking. When I build a website today for a museum or nonprofit, I'm not just thinking about launch day. I'm thinking about what happens in five years, ten years, or when the next person inherits the project.

It's never glamorous work. But it's some of the most important work I do.