As IT environments become more complex, IT professionals face unprecedented pressures to secure business data. Hybrid work is increasingly introducing new standards and cloud adoption, increasingly distributing data across a variety of environments, providers and locations, expanding the attack surface of new cyber threats. The need for a strong data protection strategy is more important than ever, but organizations are caught up in difficult, balancing acts. They struggle to manage the rise and complexity of business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) while ensuring that business critical data remains safe and recoverable.
To help IT teams and managed service providers (MSPs) understand how peers are navigating these challenges, the Backup and Recovery Report 2025 has gathered insights from over 3,000 IT, security experts and administrators around the world. The report reveals how businesses are addressing today’s biggest data protection challenges, the strategies they are adopting, and key gaps that could leave them vulnerable to data loss and downtime.
So where is the organization standing? Research shows that trust in backup systems has declined, cloud adoption outweighs data protection strategies, and recovery expectations often do not match reality. In this article, we will explore the report’s key findings to help IT teams and MSPs stay prepared for what comes next. Meanwhile, for complete insights and practical strategies, you can download the full report now to see how your organization compares.
Backup paradox: essential yet unreliable
Data backup and recovery must be a corporate safety net, but for many, it is a source of frustration, complexity and risk. The numbers tell a clear story. Backup inefficiencies have increased, teams are burdened, and security vulnerabilities are widespread. Let’s dive into important findings.
Trend #1: Data loss is not a “when” issue, not an “if”.
Over the past 12 months, a tenth of organizations have experienced operational downtime.
Trend #2: Reliability in backup systems is degraded.
Trust in backup solutions is slipping, and many companies are questioning whether it will ensure that data loss can be recovered.
Only 40% of IT teams feel confident in their backup systems. Approximately 30% are worried about their insufficient backup strategies, raising concerns about data security and resilience. Over half of organizations plan to switch backup providers, citing cost, inefficiency and limited disaster recovery capabilities as key issues.
Trend #3: Backup management is a time-consuming burden.
Managing backups is not complicated, they run out of resources. As data volumes increase, IT teams have been maintaining backup systems, testing recovery processes, and troubleshooting failures.
The team now manages backups for more than 10 hours a week, increasing operational tension. The number of companies spending more than three hours a week on backup jumps from 5% in 2022 to 23% in 2024, indicating a significant increase in time and effort. Approximately 35% of organizations don’t even know if backups have been skipped or missed, highlighting the key gap between monitoring and testing.
Trend #4: Security Gap publishes backups.
Backup systems are considered to be the last line of defense against cyber threats. However, many contain serious security flaws that put your data at risk.
Approximately 25% of workloads have policies that restrict unauthorized access to backups, making them vulnerable to malicious attacks. Credential protection levels across the enterprise vary. Only 33% of companies use dedicated password managers. Others rely on less secure methods, such as document storage platforms and browser-based password tools, introducing potential vulnerabilities.
Recovery gap: Why businesses can’t bounce quickly enough
Having a backup of your data is one thing. Quick and reliable recovery is another thing. Teams face major hurdles in ensuring quick and seamless recovery in the event of a disaster.
Trend #1: Fast and reliable data recovery remains a major challenge in data protection.
The biggest concerns IT teams cite regarding data protection are costs, compliance requirements, and the data recovery process. As teams spend hours managing and troubleshooting backup issues, there is little time to test and verify the recovery process, increasing the risk of failure in most important cases.
Trend #2: The backup and DR test gap makes your business vulnerable.
Backup solutions are just as good as their ability to restore data, but testing is contradictory across the organization.
Only 15% of companies conducting daily backup tests operate at a level of risk that most could risk crisis recovery. Disaster Recovery (DR) tests go beyond verifying backups. This includes a recovery location, timeline and assessment of effectiveness. Approximately 20% of companies run test DR tests every week, and another 23% tests monthly, but the rest test irregularly or don’t test the tests at all, so they’re not ready for the actual recovery scenario.
Trend #3: Most businesses overestimate their preparation for recovery.
The lack of frequent testing is evident when looking at actual recovery times.
Nearly 60% of businesses believe they can recover in one day, but only 35% do it. Surprisingly, it’s hard to know how long it will take to recover critical SaaS data from a business if more than 10% of businesses can recover it. Of the companies using public cloud services like Azure, almost 90% rely on native data protection tools, while over 60% lack true DR capabilities.
Cloud Dilemma: embracing growth without sacrificing protection
The cloud is the backbone of modern IT that now runs everything from infrastructure to collaboration. While businesses are rapidly adopting cloud and SaaS solutions to improve flexibility and scalability, many overlook the key factor: data protection.
Trend #1: Cloud adoption continues to increase rapidly.
Migrating to cloud-hosted workloads is becoming stronger as they are driven by the need for agility and resilience.
Currently, over 50% of workloads are hosted in the cloud, with the number expected to reach 61% within two years.
Today, most organizations leverage hybrid and multi-loud strategies to increase flexibility and avoid relying on a single provider. However, the gap between cloud and SaaS data protection remains, putting critical business information at risk. In particular, while the SaaS platform now serves as the backbone of daily business operations, this data remains vulnerable without a proper backup strategy.
Trend #2: Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) prefer Google Workspace, while businesses favor Microsoft 365.
Microsoft 365 controls the market, with over 50% of organizations relying on collaboration and productivity. Google Workspace (35%) is also the biggest option, especially among SMBs. Microsoft 365 Entra ID (31%) and Dynamics (30%) show that businesses are increasingly adopting specialized Microsoft products. Salesforce (25%) concludes the top five.
Trend #3: Cost, workload compatibility, vendor lock-in, security concerns are the biggest barriers to cloud migration.
Although cloud adoption continues to accelerate, businesses still face major hurdles in ensuring a seamless transition and securing their data.
Lessons learned: What IT leaders should prioritize right now
The status of the Backup and Recovery Report 2025 reveals that critical security gaps remain when securing on-premises, cloud, endpoints and SAAS data. There is increasingly been a disconnect between backup investment and real recovery trust, and IT teams are unsure if it can restore data when it matters most. Without a more resilient approach to data protection, businesses risk extended downtime, dramatic financial losses, and irreversible data breach.
Have you thought about how much a halt would cost your organization per minute? According to the IT outage, the average cost of unplanned downtime is $14,056 per minute per organization, according to the 2024 Costs and Containment Report.
Let’s take a closer look at the breakdown of downtime costs across different business sizes.
Business continuity depends on faster, more resilient recovery. But many organizations aren’t as prepared as they think. To minimize downtime and financial losses, IT leaders must rethink their approach to BCDR. The latest BCDR strategy goes beyond basic backup, incorporating multi-tier security, automation and hybrid cloud solutions to enhance resilience and ensure business continuity against today’s sophisticated cyber threats.
However, protection alone is not enough. Without regular testing, organizations are speculating whether recovery plans will actually pose a crisis. More frequent backups and disaster recovery tests will meet recovery goals when they are most important. Automation plays an important role there. Automating tests allows IT teams to continuously verify their ability to restore data within the required time frame without disrupting the production environment. This removes the burden on the manual and provides real insight into recovery preparation.
At the same time, stronger security controls are also essential to protect your backup environment from unauthorized access. With almost 94% of ransomware victims targeting attacker backups, there’s no choice but to pay the ransom to get access back. On that front, improving qualification management and enforcing stricter access controls will prevent malicious actors from accessing the backup infrastructure.
Final Thoughts: The future of BCDR begins now
The IT landscape is changing, and this is escalating the risks. As businesses push further into the cloud and rely more on SaaS applications, backup and disaster recovery strategies need to evolve in the same way. Cyber threats are more sophisticated, downtime is more expensive, and organizations can no longer afford to treat backups as an afterthought. To keep up with this new reality, businesses must reevaluate their approach and strengthen their defenses against the growing threat that could halt operations.
For IT teams and MSPs, insights from the state of the Backup and Recovery Report 2025 provide a clear roadmap for assessing vulnerabilities and improving resilience before disasters occur. Download the full report now to benchmark your strategy, uncover important gaps, and build a stronger and more reliable BCDR plan for the future.
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