Data protection has become a high-stakes challenge in today’s hybrid IT world. As businesses store and manage data across on-premises systems, cloud platforms, SaaS applications and remote endpoints, IT teams are under immense pressure to keep everything secure and recoverable. Meanwhile, the risks are growing just as fast as the data footprint. Cyberattacks, such as ransomware and phishing, have become more sophisticated than ever, and outdated backup strategies often fall short of defending against these attacks. It only takes a single failure in backup or recovery to trigger costly downtime, data loss and business disruption.
To help IT pros understand how their peers are tackling these challenges, we surveyed over 3,000 IT professionals worldwide to create the State of Backup and Recovery Report 2025 . These participants, representing a diverse range of industries and company sizes, reveal the biggest trends shaping data protection, the struggles their teams face and the strategies they’re using to stay ahead.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the report’s key findings to help you benchmark your approach, understand industry shifts and strengthen your backup and recovery strategy in 2025.
On-premises backup and recovery: Essential but increasingly challenging
Even as cloud adoption accelerates, on-premises infrastructure remains a key part of IT environments. However, protecting these workloads is anything but easy. IT teams face persistent threats, from hardware failures to human errors, that put uptime, data security and recovery at risk.
- Trend #1: On-premises outages remain a significant challenge; only 10% of organizations reported not suffering downtime in the last 12 months.
- Trend #2: Despite the critical need for reliable solutions, only two out of five respondents expressed confidence in their organization’s current backup system(s).
- Trend #3: Recovery expectations versus reality reveals a major gap; only about half of organizations experienced recovery time actuals (RTA) in line with their RTO goals.
- Trend #4: Backup management is consuming more IT resources; the percentage of organizations spending more than three hours weekly managing backups has increased by more than 450%.
These findings highlight that while on-premises infrastructure isn’t going away, many organizations remain vulnerable to prolonged downtime. To bridge the gap between expectations and reality, businesses need automated recovery solutions and immutable backups to ensure rapid, secure and seamless data restoration.
SaaS backup and recovery: The risks of overlooking shared responsibility
Cloud-based SaaS applications like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and Salesforce have become the backbone of modern business operations. Yet, many organizations mistakenly assume that their SaaS providers handle all aspects of data protection. This false sense of security often leads IT teams to rely solely on vendor-native tools or, worse, to operate without a backup strategy at all. In today’s threat landscape, that’s a very costly risk.
- Trend #1: SaaS data loss remains a major concern for IT teams. About 87% of IT pros we surveyed experienced a SaaS data loss incident in the past 12 months, with human error being the major cause. About 34% of organizations suffered critical SaaS data loss due to human errors.
- Trend #2: While SaaS data loss is on the rise, recovery isn’t as fast or as reliable as expected. Only 14% of organizations are confident that they can recover lost SaaS data within minutes.
One of the biggest misconceptions in IT today is that SaaS providers fully protect customer data. Relying on vendor-native tools — or worse, having no backup at all — puts businesses at serious risk. A dedicated third-party backup solution is essential for fast, reliable recovery when it matters most.
Cloud workload backup and recovery: Rapid growth brings new risks
As public cloud adoption accelerates, organizations are struggling to keep pace with evolving data protection challenges. While the cloud offers scalability and flexibility, gaps in migration, backup strategies and recovery planning leave businesses exposed to disruptions, compliance risks and rising costs.
- Trend #1: The cloud is now the default for many workloads. More than 50% of applications are already run in public cloud environments, and this number is expected to reach 61% in the next 24 months.
- Trend #2: Cost optimization and migration complexity are major obstacles to cloud adoption, with 23% of respondents citing cloud costs as their biggest challenge.
- Trend #3: Not all data is moving to the cloud; About 40% of organizations plan to keep most of their data on-premises, citing security and compliance concerns around sensitive information.
- Trend #4: Cloud backup strategies are inconsistent. Around 60% of organizations lack full disaster recovery capabilities for their Azure workloads. Meanwhile, only 40% have secured all their endpoint devices, leaving critical gaps in data protection.
Although the cloud offers scalability and efficiency, it also introduces new risks. Relying on native backup tools alone isn’t enough. To ensure business continuity and prevent data loss, organizations need robust cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions that provide full protection across all cloud environments.
Is your backup and recovery strong enough? Don’t let your business become a statistic
The State of Backup and Recovery Report 2025 reveals a harsh truth: many organizations remain underprepared for data loss, downtime and increasingly sophisticated cyberthreats. The risks are growing faster than most businesses can keep up with, and yet, too many IT teams rely on outdated strategies or incomplete solutions, leaving critical data vulnerable. It’s time to take control, strengthen your backup and recovery strategy and ensure your business stays resilient — no matter what comes next.
That’s where Unitrends comes in Unitrends delivers a comprehensive, all-in-one backup and recovery platform that simplifies data protection across your entire IT environment. Whether your data resides on-premises, in the cloud, within SaaS applications or across endpoint devices, Unitrends ensures seamless backup, fast recovery and complete resilience against cyberthreats, accidental deletions and system failures.
Why do businesses worldwide trust Unitrends with their data?
- Unified protection across all workloads: Secure on-premises servers, virtual machines, endpoints, SaaS applications and cloud workloads — all from a single platform.
- Automated recovery assurance testing: Ensure that backup and disaster recovery plans work as expected with automated, non-disruptive testing. You will never be caught off guard during a real outage.
- Orchestrated failover for business continuity: Get fast and seamless failover to minimize downtime, ensuring your critical applications and data remain available even in the event of a disaster.
- Secure, immutable cloud storage: Protect backups from ransomware with immutable storage, preventing unauthorized changes or deletions of critical data.
- Flexible and cost-efficient Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS): Leverage fully managed DR solutions with cloud-based failover. Get near-instant recovery and minimal disruption when disaster strikes.
Stay ahead of evolving threats with a backup and recovery strategy built for today’s challenges. Real-world insights can make all the difference. Download the full report now to uncover key trends, benchmark your approach against industry peers and take the next step toward a more resilient, disaster-proof business.