Veeam Software, a leader in Data Protection and Ransomware Recovery, unveiled insights from its fifth annual Veeam Data Protection Trends Report. Despite increased spending on cyber defense, IT leaders report feeling more vulnerable and less confident in their ability to recover critical data. The survey highlights ongoing concerns about cyber-attacks, the top cause of outages, and reveals that while there is a shift towards cloud-based recovery strategies, confidence in rapid recovery remains low.
Key Findings from the Veeam Data Protection Trends Report 2024 include:
Cyber-Attacks Leading Outage Causes: Cyber-attacks continue as the primary reason for business interruptions, necessitating advanced backup strategies. Other significant outage factors include infrastructure/networking issues, storage hardware problems, application software errors, public cloud resource issues, and server hardware failures.
Ransomware: A Persistent Threat: 76% of organizations faced at least one ransomware attack in the last year, a decrease from 85% in 2023. However, 26% experienced four or more attacks. Recovery during a disaster recovery (DR) situation remains a challenge, with only 13% confident in their ability to orchestrate successful recovery.
Cyber-Attacks Impeding Digital Transformation: Protecting against cyber threats and addressing environmental, social, and governance goals are major barriers to IT modernization. These challenges overshadow typical issues like skill shortages, economic concerns, and organizational problems.
Limited Confidence in Rapid Recovery: Only 32% of organizations believe they can recover from a minor attack or outage within a week. The gap between data protection expectations and IT service delivery capabilities is widening, with less than 58% of servers being recoverable within expected timeframes during large-scale tests.
Increasing Data Protection Budgets: Data protection budgets are expected to grow by 6.6% in 2024, outpacing overall IT spending growth. 92% of organizations plan to increase their data protection spending to counter cyber-attacks and adapt to the evolving production landscape.
Integration of Data Protection and IT Security: Integration with cybersecurity tools is increasingly viewed as crucial for modern data protection solutions. 41% of respondents emphasize the importance of cloud mobility, including workload transfer between clouds and standardized protection across on-premises and cloud environments.
Dave Russell, VP of Enterprise Strategy at Veeam, comments, “Ransomware remains the top threat to business continuity. The struggle against it is hindering digital transformation efforts. Despite higher spending on protection, less than a third of companies are confident in their quick recovery capabilities. This year’s report underscores the necessity of persistent cyber vigilance and the importance of effective protection and recovery strategies.”
Additional insights from the report:
Container Backup Challenges: While 59% of enterprises use containers in production, only 25% have a dedicated backup solution for them. Many organizations only back up certain components, risking application and service resumability.
Job Market Shifts: 47% of respondents plan to seek new job opportunities outside their current organization within a year, presenting both challenges and opportunities for data protection initiatives.
Rethinking Backup for Hybrid Architectures: Reliability and cloud-hosted workload protection remain top priorities for enterprise backup solutions. Organizations relying on older, datacenter-centric data protection methods face difficulties in maintaining SLAs, especially with cloud-native platforms like Microsoft 365/Salesforce or container environments.
