Our lives rely heavily on technology, and a data disaster can have serious financial consequences. The useful question is not whether you have a backup but whether it works when you need it, and recent research measures exactly that.
In Sophos’ 2026 survey, 66% of respondents whose organizations had data encrypted by ransomware used backups to recover it. In separate Veeam research, only 28% of affected organizations fully recovered all impacted data, with average recovery at 72%.
Those are two different studies with different samples and questions, so they do not combine into a single success rate. Read together they still say something plain: backups are the main recovery route, and most organizations using them still do not get everything back.
Some Scary Data Disaster & Backup Statistics (Editor’s Choice)
- 66% of ransomware victims with encrypted data used backups to recover it in 2026, up from 54% a year earlier.
- Only 28% of affected organizations fully recovered all impacted data.
- Average recovery was 72% of affected data.
- Backblaze recorded a 1.73% annualized drive failure rate in Q2 2026 across 354,415 drives.
- That is up from 1.24% in Q1 2026, against a 1.36% annual rate for 2025.
- Backblaze’s lifetime failure rate across its fleet is 1.41%.
Breaches & Retainers—General Backup Statistics
In this section, we’ll go over some general backup statistics. We’ll mainly deal with security breaches and their consequences, as well as the ways to retain your data.
1. 67% of organizations believe they’ll experience a major security breach within a year.
(Source: Black Hat)
First, we should explain what a backup is and why you should backup your data. The answer to the first question is simple—it’s the process of making spare copies of your files and folders.
The answer to the second question is in the results of a survey conducted during the Black Hat security conference in 2017. Security breaches have numerous consequences and data loss is always among them.
2. 58% of businesses lack the budget needed to recover from the attack.
(Source: Black Hat)
This is only one of the reasons why businesses can’t recover from data incidents. Backup statistics from the same survey also show that 67% of attendees aren’t trained to perform the security functions needed in case of a data breach.
3. 31% of PC users have lost all their data due to uncontrollable events.
(Source: Boston Computing Network)
This number clearly shows that there are instances when data loss can’t be prevented. One computer statistic from 1998 showed that 6% of all PCs were doomed to experience data loss. This number translates to around 4.6 million separate incidents, which cost around $11.8 billion at the time.
4. Companies with less than 250 employees are the victim of 31% of targeted attacks.
(Source: Ontech)
This tells us that small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are especially endangered—40% of those that have their own network will be attacked by hackers. What’s worse, 50% of them won’t even notice the attack.
Small business data breach statistics also tell us that 20% of SMEs will lose critical data due to a major disaster every five years.
5. Only 28% of ransomware victims fully recovered all their data.
(Source: Veeam)
Veeam’s 2026 data resilience research, based on more than 900 senior IT, security and risk leaders worldwide, found that 28% of organizations hit by ransomware fully recovered all affected data. Average recovery across affected organizations was 72% of the data involved.
The 28% is a complete-recovery rate, not a backup failure rate, and it should not be inverted into one. Partial recovery is the normal outcome: most organizations get the majority of their data back and lose some of it.
6. 93% of DraaS users report that its performance is acceptable.
(Source: UniTrends)
This entry in our backup stats shows that cloud-based Disaster Recovery as a Service is becoming increasingly popular and widely accepted. Only 7% of users reported that the process takes too long or that their cloud backups failed.
7. 86% of businesses backed up daily, monthly or weekly in 2019.
(Source: Acronis)
Acronis, one of the leading data backup companies, conducts a survey every year for the world backup day. This data from 2019 shows the frequency of backups. When it comes to consumers, 75% make backups weekly or monthly. The figures are higher for yearly backups—97% of businesses and 93% of consumers.
8. A separate survey found fewer than 10% backing up daily.
(Source: Sherweb)
These two findings look contradictory and are not. They come from different surveys, years and populations, and they ask different questions: one counts businesses backing up at any of three frequencies, the other counts only those backing up every day.
Neither is a current global benchmark. They are kept here as dated survey results, which is the honest way to use them.
Safe Zones & Wrong Turns—Types of Data Backups
This section is dedicated to different types of data backups, from storage options to the very nature of the backup sessions. We’ll mention some of the advantages and flaws of each option, but we’ll mainly focus on understanding the differences.
But first—what are the 3 types of backup?
There are full, differential, and incremental backups. With the former, you copy an entire data set. In the second case, you only copy alterations and additions since the most recent full backup. And with the latter, you copy alterations and additions since the last backup operation of any type.
9. Backblaze recorded a 1.73% annualized drive failure rate in Q2 2026.
(Source: Backblaze)
Backblaze publishes failure data for its own production fleet every quarter, which is the largest public dataset of its kind. Its Q2 2026 report, released on September 29, 2026, put the annualized failure rate at 1.73% across 354,415 drives.
The trend is worth seeing in full rather than from one quarter: 1.36% for the whole of 2025, down from 1.55% in 2024; then 1.24% in Q1 2026, before the rise to 1.73% in Q2. Backblaze’s lifetime rate across all drives it has ever run is 1.41%.
Two cautions. AFR is annualized, so 1.73% is the rate at which drives would fail over a year at that quarter’s pace, not the share of drives that died during the quarter. And this is an enterprise fleet of constantly-spinning drives in data centers, which is not a forecast for the drive in your laptop.
10. Nearly 40% of companies have over 10,000 sensitive files that are open to everyone.
(Source: Varonis)
This is an important part of the business data backup story. If all employees can access that many sensitive files, the chances that some of them will delete, update, or compromise vital documents purely by accident are pretty big.
Faces of Corruption—Data Loss Statistics
In this section, we will explore the factors that can lead to data loss incidents, their consequences, and how to face them properly.
11. 36% of professionals consider ransomware the most serious threat to cybersecurity.
(Source: BlackHat)
This network statistic comes from the survey conducted during the BlackHat security conference in 2017. It clearly shows that the increased use of ransomware is responsible for a great part of the data loss incidents.
12. During the first half of 1999, American businesses lost more than $7.6 billion because of computer viruses.
(Source: Boston Computing Network)
This indicates that data corrupted because of a virus was relatively common in 1991. Since then, hackers have become much more skillful, so it’s safe to say that the damages are much greater today.
13. Downtime caused small companies to lose over $100,000 per ransomware incident.
(Source: CNN business)
Ransomware can cause network crashes, which resulted in 25 hours of downtime for more than 16% of businesses in 2017.
14. Human error is responsible for 52% of data breaches.
(Source: Whoa.com)
As you can see, the main reason businesses need a data recovery plan is not cyberattacks or natural disasters but human negligence. This is why security training for all employees is crucial.
15. 32% of data loss incidents happen while migrating devices.
(Source: Ontrack.com)
Of all data loss examples, this is the most neglected one. In a 2016 survey, IT administrators reported that the top reason for backup recovery failures was the fact that backups weren’t current or operating correctly.
16. Hardware failure accounts for 45% of all backup failures.
(Source: Sherweb.com)
If we take a look at statistics in the long term, hardware faces a 100% chance of a failure—it is just a matter of time. Off-site data corruption is constantly lurking, waiting to manifest itself in the form of mechanical failure or during format migration. This is why safety lies in frequent backups.
17. Only 55% of companies performed recovery testing in 2019.
(Source: UniTrends)
It seems that people simply can’t get accustomed to the fact that a PCs crash and a backup might be the only thing that can save your data. But things might be changing for the better—this a 12% increase in the number of annual recovery tests compared to 4 years ago.
18. The average cost of a data breach in 2020 was $3.86 million.
(Source: IBM Security)
The global average time needed to identify and contain the breach is 280 days. The longer this takes the more increases the average cost of data recovery.
19. A data breach contained in under 200 days can reduce the cost by up to $1 million.
(Source: IBM Security)
More importantly, backup stats show us that having a response team can save you an additional $1million.
Moving on—Disaster Recovery Statistics
In this section, we’ll mainly focus on the bright side of the story, but we’ll also mention some of the issues we haven’t addressed yet.
20. Only 52% of employees receive cybersecurity policy training once per year.
(Source: Clutch)
Disaster recovery facts indicate that cybersecurity training is critical for new employees. But with data breaches evolving and becoming more complex, all employees need to be prepared.
21. In 2018, cybersecurity expenses reached $96 billion.
(Source: PhoenixNAP)
This high disaster recovery cost is making businesses take cybercrimes seriously. It is predicted that by 2022, the global cost of cybercrimes will reach $6 trillion a year.
22. Paying a ransom is not the same as recovering from backups.
(Source: Sophos)
This page used to cite a figure for how much data was recovered after paying a ransom, and used it as general recovery guidance. That conflates two different things.
The current evidence on backups is at the top of this page: 66% of organizations whose data was encrypted used backups to recover it in 2026, up from 54% in 2025 and close to the 68% recorded in 2024. Sophos allowed respondents to report more than one recovery method, so that is a measure of backup use during recovery, not of complete recovery. Our cybersecurity statistics cover the wider ransomware picture, and our data breach statistics cover what happens when the data gets out rather than locked.
23. 46% of consumers have no idea what ransomware is.
(Source: Acronis)
This stat comes from the survey conducted by one of the top disaster recovery companies, Acronis. It shows that even people with a backup plan have no idea what it can protect them from. This lack of education might get in their way of choosing the most appropriate solution.
Gearing up—Emerging Trends in Backup Statistics
In this last section, we’ll take a peek into the future of backup and storage.
24. 74.9% of users say that their data recovery budget increased in 2018.
(Source: Solutions Review)
And 21% of them said that the increase was significant, show backup stats from a 2019 report released by Datrium.
25. The average person created 36GB of data per month in 2016.
(Source: Sherweb.com)
The amount of data we produce is growing and so do file sizes. 90% of people store this immense data on local storage devices, which is not the most effective backup solution. Many businesses now rely on quality cloud storage, which makes migration easier.
This trend in backup statistics underlines the importance of remaining current on data backups and employing new tech solutions for better data protection.
26. More than half of users are using a multi-cloud environment.
(Source: Solutions Review)
This technology seems to be gaining traction. Backup stats from the Datrium report confirm the general cloud adoption trends: more than 10% of respondents are using five clouds or more within their organizations.
Analyzing the Data—A Wrap-Up
The main point of all information was to answer one crucial question—what does it mean to backup your data?
We demonstrated that there’s more to it than it seems. We covered data loss and data recovery statistics and showed you the different types of backup solutions, as well as some trends in the cloud backup.
If you missed some of that, read our backup statistics to learn all there is to know about losing and recovering data.
