Most businesses couldn’t survive three days downtime

A new study released to coincide with today’s World Backup Day shows that 76 percent of organizations would not survive more than three days of downtime, while 44 percent of IT leaders are not confident their organizations could recover all critical data within 24 hours of a major cyberattack or data loss event.

The report from Veeam, based on a survey of more than 4,000 C-Suite and senior IT leaders, finds ransomware and cyberattacks top the list of threats identified by business leaders, with 67 percent citing it as risks they dread most in the year ahead.

AI-related risks — including data leaks, algorithm bias and uncontrolled automation — rank behind at 29 percent, signaling that emerging AI-driven threats are already a mainstream boardroom concern. These top three threats pose a high risk of data loss and outages. And while nearly half of organizations (47 percent) expect a significant data breach or cyberattack, only 32 percent believe full recovery of their critical data and business operations is very likely. As a result, 62 percent of leaders increasingly view data outages as a greater financial threat to their business than an economic recession, making resilience an urgent business priority.

“In today’s AI-powered world, trust in data is every organization’s most valuable asset. Backups are the last line of truth in a world where AI can fabricate, ransomware can encrypt, and a single misconfiguration can cascade across an entire infrastructure in minutes,” says Dave Russell, senior vice president and head of strategy at Veeam. “World Backup Day is a timely call to action for boards and IT leaders to ensure data resilience and comprehensive backup strategies are in place. In the AI era, it’s not just about recovering your data – it’s about keeping your business functioning and thriving with the trusted data it needs. Too many organizations are still managing risk reactively, when real innovation — and real trust — begin with a foundation of resilient, secure data.”

The study highlights some worrying leadership failings too. 38 percent of boards or leadership teams surveyed have never formally discussed AI-driven or emerging attack types, leaving organizations exposed and undermining trust in their AI capabilities. Only 31 percent of boards review resilience readiness, such as recovery KPIs or failover results, on a quarterly basis, and responsibility for resilience is often split across CIOs, CISOs, heads of risk, and COOs.

There’s a toll on employees too, 57 percent of leaders report employees have resigned, threatened to resign, or burned out following major cyber incidents, with lost productivity and well-being among the top unexpected impacts.

You can find out more on the Veeam site.

Image Credit: Michael Edwards/Dreamstime.com