The Industry Speaks: World Backup Day 2026

For World Backup Day, organisations should ensure they maintain multiple backup copies of critical data using different formats, the proven “3‑2‑1” approach, and, most importantly, know when and how to recover both the data and the underlying business services. For individuals, the day serves as a reminder to protect important files such as family photographs in a secure and accessible place. Resilience starts with readiness, for both enterprises and people alike.

Sean Deuby
Principal Technologist at Semperis

World Backup Day is an important reminder of the ever-increasing likelihood that your organisation will be the next cyberattack target. While backup remains essential, today’s threat landscape means businesses need to think more broadly about recovery, resilience and what it takes to restore operations with confidence after an attack.

Backups matter not simply because they preserve data, but because they enable recovery: a backup does not help you if you cannot recover with it. As cyber threats continue to evolve, especially through the growing use of AI, organisations need to create a clean recovery environment and restore critical systems quickly, securely and outside the control of threat actors. That means broadening recovery strategies to account for the underlying infrastructure that enables the business to function, particularly identity systems, which are central to access, control and trust across the organisation. You cannot assume that threat actors will leave any of your critical systems alone.

World Backup Day is also an opportunity to reinforce that recovery planning should not just focus on what can be restored, but how effectively the organisation can respond when critical systems are unavailable. Identity recovery is becoming an increasingly important part of crisis response, particularly as organisations recognise that – unlike other workloads - restoring identity system operations is different from being able to trust those systems after they have been compromised. If identity is lost or cannot be verified, the resulting disruption affects not only technical recovery but also complicates communications, coordination, and decision-making even further. Organisations should consider a more integrated approach that factors in identity system (such as Active Directory, Entra ID, Okta, Ping Identity) compromise as part of recovery. This is key to helping organisations strengthen resilience, reduce disruption and recover more effectively in the event of an attack.

James Eagleton
Managing Director, ANZ, at Cohesity

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Data loss comes in many forms, from ransomware attacks and hardware failures through to simple human error. Whatever the cause, the impact is always disruptive and costly.

World Backup Day is a timely reminder of the role backup plays. However, it’s important to recognise that backup is only the first step in a broader journey towards cyber resilience maturity.

True business resilience comes from strengthening every link in the chain. That means ensuring data is not only backed up, but also protected, assessed for threats, and recoverable to a clean, secure state. This includes capabilities such as immutability, threat detection, incident response, and coordinated recovery processes across IT and security teams.

The challenge is that many organisations across Australia still take a fragmented, patchwork approach. Our latest data shows less than two-fifths of Australian organisations (42%) back up data across all workloads, often relying on multiple platforms that increase complexity and reduce visibility. As with any chain, a single weak link in a resilience strategy can undermine the whole.

As a result, backup’s primary role today should be to support secure recovery. In the event of a cyber incident, it’s not just about restoring data quickly, but restoring it safely, free from compromise and without risking reinfection. That requires coordination, well-defined processes, and validation, not just technology.

Craig Stockdale
Country Managing Director ANZ at Wasabi Technologies

In the age of AI, data has moved from being a business record to a business engine. Data is being accessed, copied and shared across more systems and tools at a greater scale and speed than ever before. This means more places for data to live, but also more opportunities for it to be exposed, corrupted or locked up, especially as computing technologies advance and the threat landscape evolves resulting in increasingly more sophisticated cyberattacks.

Wasabi’s latest research found that while 89 per cent of ANZ organisations back up their data, only 45 per cent are confident they could remain operational after a cyberattack. That gap reflects how quickly data practices have changed, without the same lift in resilience. Today’s attacks don’t just disrupt systems, they target the data itself through corruption, encryption, or exfiltration. In these scenarios, the question is not just whether data can be restored, but whether it can still be trusted once recovered.

Organisations that will cope best are those who regularly review their security practices to ensure they remain effective against evolving threats: ensuring copies are protected, immutable, and can be verified quickly. Increasingly, this also means thinking about how critical data can be isolated or even hidden from attackers altogether to add an additional layer of defence beyond traditional backups. Because the longer it takes to verify and restore clean data, the greater the operational and customer impact.

Aaron Bugal
Field CISO APJ at Sophos

Every year, businesses are told to back up their data but the “why” often gets lost in the noise. The reality is simple: if you don’t have a complete, reliable backup, you’re effectively out of options when ransomware hits. At that point, the conversation shifts from prevention to damage control, and that usually means being cornered into paying a ransom just to regain access to your own data.

\Attackers take advantage of this with many going after backups first. If they can weaken or destroy your safety net, they dramatically increase their chances of getting paid. That’s why the conversation can’t just stop at “have backups”, it needs to extend to whether those backups are secure, isolated, and recoverable when it matters.

Backups should be treated like any other critical safety control. You wouldn’t install a smoke detector and never check it again, and the same logic applies here. Backups need to be monitored, tested regularly, and updated as your environment changes. Because when an incident occurs the difference between disruption and disaster often comes down to whether your backups actually work.

Andre Schindler
General Manager EMEA at NinjaOne

World Backup Day is a reminder: backups aren’t just a tick on the to-do list – they’re a core factor of operational resilience. And that resilience must be supported by modern backup strategies wherever business-critical data is created, spread across endpoints, servers, and SaaS applications. What matters isn’t only that backups are taken, but how quickly and reliably data can be restored when it counts – without media breaks, unnecessary complexity, or lost time. When IT teams can mount backups, restore files directly from a single central interface, and respond immediately via remote access, recovery processes become significantly faster and clearer: less complexity, greater efficiency – and, above all, greater confidence to act when it matters most.

Anthony Daniel
Managing Director, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, at WatchGuard Technologies

This World Backup Day, businesses need to rethink the idea that having a backup means being protected. Too often backups are treated as a ‘set and forget’ safety net, but if they haven’t been tested, they may not work when it matters most.

The threat landscape is evolving rapidly in both scale and sophistication. WatchGuard’s latest Internet Security Report highlights a 1,500 per cent surge in new, evasive malware, with 96 per cent delivered over encrypted channels, enabling attackers to slip past traditional defences and increasingly target critical systems, including backups.

In Australia specifically, WatchGuard blocked over 96,000 network attacks in Q4 2025 alone, more than ten times the volume of malware detections over the same period. Attackers are persistently probing internet-facing systems for weaknesses, and once inside, backups are often one of the first things they target.

The 3-2-1 approach remains the most effective strategy: keep three copies of your data across two different media types, with at least one copy stored off-site isolated from the main network.

But strategy alone isn’t enough. Businesses need to test their backups regularly and deliberately, before they need them. World Backup Day is a good moment to find out if yours would actually hold up.

Dr Kawin Boonyapredees
APJ CISO Advisor at KnowBe4

World Backup Day is a valuable reminder of how dependent we’ve all become on our digital lives, and how easily personal data can be lost or held hostage. In Australia, we see a growing gap between how confident people feel about cybersecurity and the habits they actually follow. KnowBe4's latest research shows that more than half of employed Australians put more thought into securing their work accounts than their personal ones, even though personal data plays an equally important role in resilience. The same study found that two‑thirds of Australians reuse passwords across multiple accounts, and around one in four take no action after hearing about a major data breach unless they are directly notified. These behaviours leave people exposed in ways they often don’t realise.

Backups become critical in these moments. A single compromised password, an unexpected malware infection, or a lost device can quickly escalate into a situation where precious files or years of personal history are suddenly out of reach. Having a reliable, up‑to‑date backup means you can recover quickly, without relying on luck or hoping that an incident stops short of causing real damage.

Take a moment today to check when you last backed up your most important files. It’s a simple way to strengthen both personal and professional resilience, and to ensure that if something does go wrong, you and your business are able to efficiently restore and effectively recover your important files and data.

Garry Valenzisi
Vice President & General Manager Asia Pacific, at Iron Mountain

In today’s threat landscape, backup failure is no longer just an IT inconvenience; it's a cyber risk with direct business consequences. As organisations accelerate their use of AI, where data quality underpins performance, this World Backup Day, my call to industry is to give stronger focus and governance to the way data is held and managed across its lifecycle.

Too many organisations still rely on ‘set-and-forget’ backups, only discovering after a ransomware attack or outage that their data cannot be recovered. Our research with FT Longitude last year found that globally, the average large organisation has lost almost $390,000 over the past 12 months due to data integrity issues, an area where stronger backup governance has a clear role to play.

The upside is equally clear. The same research shows that strong data practices can unlock up to $1.9bn in revenue. Backup processes are a critical part of that, but only when they are actively managed, tested and embedded into wider information governance. True cyber resilience depends not just on protecting data, but on knowing, before an incident, that it can be restored quickly, completely and with confidence.

Charles Guillemet
CTO at Ledger

In the world of digital assets, ownership is defined by access, and access ultimately depends on a user’s ability to recover it. That’s why regular backups are not optional; they are a foundational requirement for anyone managing digital value. Unlike centralised financial systems, blockchain technologies remove intermediaries: there is no authority that can restore access if credentials are lost. The secret recovery phrase becomes the single point of continuity, and backing it up securely is just as critical as protecting the assets themselves. It is also good practice to test your backup regularly, as this not only ensures that the setup works as intended but also helps users feel confident and at ease with their recovery process.

At Ledger, we see backups as a cornerstone of true digital ownership. Self-custody is not only about holding your private keys, it’s about eliminating single points of failure while maintaining control. Strengthening this resilience means going beyond a single backup and adopting a more robust, diversified approach.

Solutions like Ledger Recover introduce a secure, user-consented backup service, where encrypted fragments of the recovery phrase are distributed to reduce reliance on a single physical copy. In parallel, the Ledger Recovery Key provides a simple, offline and tamper-resistant backup device designed for durability and ease of use, while physical solutions such as cryptosteel offer a robust, fire- and water-resistant way to preserve recovery phrases over the long term. Combining these three approaches gives users the flexibility to match their backup strategy to their individual needs and risk tolerance. A commonly recommended best practice is the ‘1-2-3’ strategy: maintaining three separate backups, across two different types of media, with at least one copy stored offsite. Together, these approaches enable users to navigate the digital asset ecosystem with greater confidence, enhancing security without compromising on sovereignty.

Steve Moros
Senior Director, Advanced Technology Group, Asia Pacific and Japan at Proofpoint

World Backup Day is a timely reminder that data loss is not a distant, unlikely threat but everyday reality for individuals and organisations alike. However, despite this 21 per cent of people have never made a backup, and 29 per cent of data loss cases are the result of simple human error.

Proofpoint's 2025 Human Factor Report illustrates just how aggressively cybercriminals are targeting people as the primary vector for data loss. About 25 per cent of all state-sponsored phishing campaigns now begin with “benign” emails to build trust, a striking shift toward psychological manipulation over technical exploits.

The uncomfortable truth is that many individuals and organisations are failing on both fronts simultaneously: they are not backing up their data, and they are not adequately protected against the threats most likely to cause data loss in the first place.

World Backup Day is an opportunity to address both sides of the equation. The 3-2-1 rule remains best practice: keep three copies of your data, on two types of media, with one copy off-site or in the cloud. But backups alone are not sufficient.

Organisations must pair robust data protection strategies with layered, people-centric security, continuous employee education, multilayered threat detection, and a clear understanding of how and where data is stored and accessed across every channel.

Russell Todd
Security Solutions Lead at Avanade Australia

World Backup Day is a timely reminder that data is more than just a technical asset, it’s a leadership responsibility. For Australian organisations, protecting data is no longer about recovery after an incident. It's about building confidence to operate, innovate, and scale in an increasingly AI and digitally driven economy.

As organisations accelerate AI adoption, the role of backup is evolving. Data is no longer static – it is actively accessed, queried, analysed and reused across business operations.

Avanade research found that 94 per cent of businesses consider protecting sensitive data critical to successfully realising value from AI, highlighting just how closely data protection and innovation are now linked. In fact, 85 per cent worry they will fall behind if they don’t fast‑track AI adoption, creating pressure to move quickly while still managing risk responsibly.

Today, we are seeing businesses prioritise strong backup foundations and embedding security and governance earlier in their digital and AI initiatives. Rather than treating security as a last‑minute compliance “box ticking” exercise, the leading organisations are designing it from the outset.

This creates the foundations where teams can navigate any challenges with confidence, supported by clear executive sponsorships, guardrails, and strong visibility over how data is used.

Giri Jayaprakash
Client Partner at Adactin

World Cloud Security Day is increasingly prompting a rethink of where cloud risk truly sits. While security discussions have traditionally focused on infrastructure and perimeter controls, industry attention has shifted towards a different reality: most cloud incidents now begin with valid access, not technical exploits. Modern cloud environments are governed by a control plane made up of identities, permissions, APIs, and automation, and it is this layer, rather than the underlying infrastructure, that has become the most attractive target. The perimeter hasn’t failed; it has largely ceased to exist.

Indeed, today, a growing area of concern is identity and permission drift at scale. As organisations adopt automation, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure‑as‑code, cloud environments evolve continuously. Identities, particularly non‑human ones such as service accounts and automated workloads, are created rapidly to support agility, while governance processes often remain periodic and manual. Over time, access accumulates incrementally, creating environments that may appear compliant during reviews but are operationally exposed in day‑to‑day use. This gap between cloud speed and governance speed is increasingly recognised as a systemic risk rather than an isolated misconfiguration issue.

Paul Davis
Area Vice President Sales APAC at ClickHouse

As cloud environments scale, the volume of security telemetry scales with them: access logs, network flows, configuration changes, all growing exponentially. Most of the traditional security tooling organisations rely on was built around batch-oriented, sampled data, and these platforms actually encourage teams to reduce what they ingest to keep costs manageable, which means the granular, high-cardinality detail where real threats tend to surface gets aggregated away long before a security analyst ever sees it.

This is exactly the kind of problem ClickHouse was built to solve. As a high-performance data platform powering workloads across real-time analytics, data warehousing, observability, and AI/ML, ClickHouse gives security teams the ability to unify logs, traces, and metrics into a single analytical layer and run sub-second queries across billions of events at full fidelity. Customers like LaunchDarkly already ingest petabytes of event data monthly through ClickHouse, and on our own cloud platform, we've invested heavily in enterprise-grade controls, including multi-tiered role-based access, SAML SSO with just-in-time provisioning, customer-managed encryption keys, and certifications spanning SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and PCI DSS. We've also recently acquired Langfuse, the open-source LLM engineering platform, which brings tracing, evaluation, and alerting for agentic AI systems, because as agents become more embedded in cloud infrastructure, having visibility into how they behave matters just as much as monitoring the infrastructure they run on.