As IT environments develop extra advanced, IT professionals are going through unprecedented strain to safe business-critical knowledge. With hybrid work the brand new normal and cloud adoption on the rise, knowledge is more and more distributed throughout completely different environments, suppliers and places, increasing the assault floor for rising cyberthreats. Whereas the necessity for a robust knowledge safety technique has change into extra vital than ever, organizations discover themselves caught in a troublesome balancing act. They’re struggling to handle the rising prices and complexities of enterprise continuity and catastrophe restoration (BCDR) whereas guaranteeing that their business-critical knowledge stays safe and recoverable.
To assist IT groups and managed service suppliers (MSPs) perceive how their friends are navigating these challenges, the State of Backup and Restoration Report 2025 has gathered insights from greater than 3,000 IT professionals, safety consultants and directors worldwide. The report reveals how companies are tackling at present’s greatest knowledge safety challenges, the methods they’re adopting and the vital gaps that might depart them weak to knowledge loss and downtime.
So, the place do organizations stand? The survey signifies that the arrogance in backup programs is declining, cloud adoption is outpacing knowledge safety methods and restoration expectations usually do not match actuality. On this article, we’ll discover the important thing findings from the report to assist IT groups and MSPs keep ready for what comes subsequent. In the meantime, for full insights and actionable methods, you can download the complete report now and see how your group compares.
The backup paradox: Important but more and more unreliable
Knowledge backup and restoration ought to be a security internet for companies, however for a lot of, it has change into a supply of frustration, complexity and threat. The numbers inform a transparent story — backup inefficiencies are rising, IT groups are overburdened and safety vulnerabilities stay widespread. Let’s dive into the important thing findings.
Development #1: Knowledge loss is not a query of “if” however “when.”
9 in 10 organizations skilled operational downtime prior to now 12 months.
Development #2: Confidence in backup programs is declining.
Belief in backup options is slipping, leaving many companies questioning whether or not they can reliably get better from knowledge loss.
- Solely 40% of IT groups really feel assured of their backup programs.
- About 30% fear their backup technique is insufficient, elevating issues about knowledge safety and recoverability.
- Greater than half of organizations plan to modify backup suppliers, citing price, inefficiency and restricted catastrophe restoration capabilities as main ache factors.
Development #3: Backup administration is a time-consuming burden.
Managing backups is not simply advanced — it is draining IT sources. As knowledge volumes develop, IT groups are spending extra time than ever sustaining backup programs, testing restoration processes and troubleshooting failures.
- IT groups now spend 10+ hours per week managing backups, including to operational pressure.
- The variety of companies spending greater than three hours weekly on backups jumped from 5% in 2022 to 23% in 2024, denoting a major rise in effort and time.
- Round 35% of organizations would not even know if backups had been skipped or missed, highlighting vital gaps in monitoring and testing.
Development #4: Safety gaps are leaving backups uncovered.
Backup programs are presupposed to be the final line of protection in opposition to cyberthreats. Nonetheless, many include critical safety flaws that put knowledge in danger.
- About 25% of workloads lack insurance policies that restrict unauthorized entry to backups, leaving them weak to malicious assaults.
- There are various ranges of safety for credentials throughout companies. Solely 33% of companies use devoted password managers. Others depend on much less safe strategies like doc storage platforms or browser-based password instruments, introducing potential vulnerabilities.
The restoration hole: Why companies cannot bounce again quick sufficient
Having the backup of information is one factor; recovering it rapidly and reliably is one other. IT groups face vital hurdles in guaranteeing quick, seamless restoration when catastrophe strikes.
Development #1: Fast and dependable knowledge restoration stays a serious problem in knowledge safety.
The highest issues cited by IT groups with respect to knowledge safety are prices, compliance necessities and the precise means of recovering knowledge. Since IT groups spend hours managing and troubleshooting backup points, it leaves little time for testing and validating restoration processes, growing the danger of failure when it issues most.
Development #2: Backup and DR testing gaps depart companies weak.
A backup answer is just pretty much as good as its means to revive knowledge, but testing stays inconsistent throughout organizations.
- Solely 15% of companies conduct every day backup exams, which means most function with a stage of threat that might jeopardize restoration in a disaster.
- Catastrophe restoration (DR) testing goes past simply verifying backups — it entails assessing restoration places, timelines and effectiveness. Whereas round 20% of companies conduct DR exams weekly and one other 23% check month-to-month, the remaining both check irregularly or by no means, leaving them unprepared for real-world restoration situations.
Development #3: Most companies overestimate their restoration readiness.
The shortage of frequent testing is obvious when precise restoration occasions.
- Whereas near 60% of companies imagine they will get better in a day, solely 35% really do.
- Alarmingly, greater than 10% of companies do not even know the way lengthy it will take to get better their business-critical SaaS knowledge, if they may get better it in any respect.
- Amongst companies utilizing public cloud companies like Azure, virtually 90% depend on native knowledge safety instruments, but greater than 60% of them lack true DR capabilities.
The cloud dilemma: Embracing development with out sacrificing safety
The cloud is now the spine of contemporary IT, powering every little thing from infrastructure to collaboration. Companies are quickly adopting cloud and SaaS options to reinforce flexibility and scalability, however many are overlooking a vital issue: knowledge safety.
Development #1: Cloud adoption continues to surge.
The shift to cloud-hosted workloads is just rising stronger, pushed by the necessity for agility and resilience.
- Greater than 50% of workloads are actually hosted within the cloud, with that quantity anticipated to achieve 61% inside two years.
Most organizations now leverage hybrid and multicloud methods to extend flexibility and keep away from reliance on a single supplier. Nonetheless, gaps in cloud and SaaS knowledge safety stay, placing vital enterprise data in danger. Notably, SaaS platforms now function the spine of every day enterprise operations, however with out the suitable backup methods, this knowledge stays weak.
Development #2: Small and midsize companies (SMBs) favor Google Workspace, whereas enterprises favor Microsoft 365.
- Microsoft 365 dominates the market, with over 50% of organizations counting on it for collaboration and productiveness.
- Google Workspace (35%) stays a best choice as properly, significantly amongst SMBs.
- Microsoft 365 Entra ID (31%) and Dynamics (30%) present that companies are additionally more and more adopting specialised Microsoft merchandise.
- Salesforce (25%) rounds out the highest 5.
Development #3: Price, workload compatibility, vendor lock-in and safety issues are the largest obstacles to cloud migration.
Whereas cloud adoption continues to speed up, companies nonetheless face main hurdles in guaranteeing a seamless transition and securing their knowledge.
The teachings discovered: What IT leaders should prioritize now
The State of Backup and Restoration Report 2025 reveals that vital safety gaps stay whereas securing on-premises, cloud, endpoint and SaaS knowledge. There’s a rising disconnect between backup investments and precise restoration confidence, with IT groups uncertain whether or not they can restore knowledge when it issues most. And not using a extra resilient strategy to knowledge safety, companies threat extended downtime, drastic monetary losses and irreversible knowledge breaches.
Have you ever thought-about how a lot an outage may price your group per minute? According to the IT Outages: 2024 Costs and Containment Report, the common price of unplanned downtime is $14,056 per minute per group.
Let’s take a better have a look at the breakdown of downtime prices throughout completely different enterprise sizes.
Enterprise continuity relies on sooner, extra resilient restoration. Nonetheless, many organizations aren’t as ready as they suppose. To attenuate downtime and monetary losses, IT leaders should rethink their strategy to BCDR. A contemporary BCDR technique goes past primary backup, incorporating multilayered safety, automation and hybrid cloud options to strengthen resilience and guarantee enterprise continuity in opposition to at present’s subtle cyberthreats.
Safety alone is not sufficient, although. With out common testing, organizations are left guessing whether or not their restoration plans will maintain up in an actual disaster. Extra frequent backup and catastrophe restoration testing ensures that restoration goals are met when it issues most. Automation performs a key position there. By automating testing, IT groups can repeatedly confirm their means to revive knowledge inside required timeframes — all with out disrupting the manufacturing atmosphere. This removes the guide burden and gives actual insights into restoration readiness.
On the identical time, stronger safety controls are additionally important to defending backup environments from unauthorized entry. Nearly 94% of ransomware victims have their backups targeted by attackers, which leaves them with no different selection however to pay the ransom to get again their entry. On that entrance, enhancing credential administration and imposing stricter entry controls may help forestall malicious actors from accessing backup infrastructure.
Remaining ideas: The way forward for BCDR begins now
The IT panorama is altering, and with it, the dangers are escalating. As companies push additional into the cloud and rely extra on SaaS functions, their backup and catastrophe restoration methods should evolve simply as rapidly. Cyberthreats are extra superior, downtime is costlier and organizations can not afford to deal with backup as an afterthought. To maintain tempo with this new actuality, companies should reassess their strategy and strengthen their defenses in opposition to the rising threats that might convey operations to a halt.
For IT groups and MSPs, the insights from the State of Backup and Restoration Report 2025 present a transparent roadmap to evaluate vulnerabilities and enhance resilience earlier than catastrophe strikes. Download the full report now to benchmark your technique, uncover vital gaps, and construct a stronger, extra dependable BCDR plan for the longer term.
