I had a couple users who got bit up to three times, and each time shed massive tears for the lost data due to their own laziness/neglect/lack of discipline.
That’s one nice thing about CCC, is that you can set it to report/email/prompt for “errors” when the backup volume isn’t present at the time of the next scheduled backup; usually those messages stack up enough for most people to get around to attaching the drive. (For family members, I CC myself on those errors, and nag them personally if I see a failure without a followup success in a timely manner).
But for Time Machine, it doesn’t provide any native warnings, of course, so for these two particular problem children, I wrote a script to monitor their TM backups, and if they didn’t complete one in a timely manner, I had it repeatedly and progressively post obnoxious, impossible to ignore warning messages such that the machine was eventually effectively unusable until they attached the drive or got on the network that hosted TM.
For users I actually am/was paid to manage, I have a “dashboard” on my Desktop (GeekTool) and via Web (HTML/ Dropbox) that monitors both CCC and TM and reports last-completed statuses/dates, and slowly changes from green to yellow to red for each so I have a quick visual to know when to chastise, or correct, if it’s a legit software, not user failure.
The irony of the T2 security, of course, is that 99% of people do not do anything resembling a secure, let alone encrypted backup, and that unencrypted backup drive is usually within hands-reach of the machine that might be stolen.
And I can’t tell you the number of people who give me a dumb blank look when I point out they are carrying their only backup in the same bag as their only laptop; encrypted or not, what’s your plan, Dexter, when someone snags your bag at Starbucks?