When IT and operational resilience meet: Staying one step ahead of regulation and rogue threats

In the modern cyber landscape, resilience isn’t just a buzzword — it’s essential to survival.

After all, no business is immune to cyberthreats. With attacks growing in sophistication and frequency, it’s no longer a question of if but when somebody will target your organization. Almost two-thirds (69%) of businesses fell victim to at least one ransomware attack in 2024, according to the Veeam 2025 Risk to Resilience Report, a stark reminder that cyberthreats are simply unavoidable.

Perhaps more alarming is that in the majority (89%) of these attacks, hackers attempted to destroy backups where critical sensitive data and recovery systems reside. This can severely undermine recovery efforts and expose unprepared businesses to prolonged disruption and financial loss.

These figures underline the urgent need for businesses to go beyond basic compliance and instead embrace a forward-looking resilience strategy that anticipates emerging threats and keeps pace with evolving regulatory pressures.

Compliance isn’t a one-time task

Regulations evolve at breakneck speed, but threats advance even faster, outpacing the ability of regulators to update them. Staying compliant isn’t a one-time task; it’s an ongoing commitment every organization must make.

Meeting current obligations is just the starting point. To stay ahead, businesses must cultivate a culture of compliance that extends across every layer of the company and becomes woven into day-to-day operations, IT architecture, and business strategy. True resilience lies in proactive, organization-wide preparedness that transforms compliance from a reactive task into a strategic, future-proofed capability.

This is particularly true for financial organizations, which must now comply with the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA).

DORA represents a seismic shift in how companies are expected to manage digital risk. The regulation aims to strengthen the digital resilience of organizations in the face of cyberthreats by mandating rigorous standards for data protection, incident reporting, and data recovery.

Meeting these requirements isn’t a one-off exercise. Continuous compliance is critical, ensuring that firms are not only audit-ready at all times but also able to adapt quickly to evolving threats and regulatory changes.

For organizations that get this right, compliance becomes more than just a box-ticking exercise — it becomes a competitive advantage.

How Veeam can help

Continuous compliance demands more than internal diligence: it requires real-time visibility, automated controls, and rapid recovery capabilities that most businesses can’t achieve alone. External expertise and purpose-built technologies are essential.

Veeam, a leading data resilience provider with strong backup, recovery, portability, security, and intelligence experience, is here to help and can assist organizations in ensuring compliance with demanding digital resilience standards.

The company’s platform delivers seamless backup, recovery, and data management across cloud, virtual, physical, and SaaS environments, ensuring critical data is always protected and available. What’s more, with encrypted data transport, immutable storage, and AI-powered malware detection, Veeam can help organizations safeguard against cyberattacks and data corruption, directly supporting DORA’s protection mandates.

CASE STUDY 1: Groupe AGRICA

Groupe AGRICA, a pivotal player in France's social protection sector, has partnered with Veeam to help it meet the challenge of new regulations.

Since 2014, AGRICA has entrusted Veeam with safeguarding its extensive IT infrastructure, encompassing 850 virtual servers, 1,500 virtual desktops, and nearly 250TB of data.

For years, Veeam's integration with VMware has helped AGRICA streamline backup and recovery processes, while its Instant VM Recovery feature has minimized potential service disruptions.

A notable recent addition to AGRICA's data protection strategy is the adoption of Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365. This replaced the company’s previous on-premises implementation to provide high-performance backups and near-instant mailbox recovery, bolstering operational efficiency and user satisfaction.

“As a financial organization, we’re subject to a wide range of regulations that include DORA and NIS2,” said Olivier Auschitzky, head of system infrastructure at Groupe AGRICA. “Veeam helps us demonstrate that we have cyber-resilience measures in place and that we can recover data effectively when required, simplifying compliance with these policies.”

CASE STUDY 2: WienIT

For WienIT, the digital backbone of Vienna’s municipal infrastructure powerhouse Wiener Stadtwerke, the fast-changing regulatory environment was proving difficult to contend with alone. The organization needed to ensure alignment with the stringent NIS2 cybersecurity directive, which imposes stricter risk management, reporting, and governance requirements, but found its previous solution lacking in automation, transparency, and resilience.

After a thorough selection process, WienIT decided to work with Veeam thanks to its ease of use and support for virtualized environments.

The organization not only worked with Veeam to transform its backup and recovery capabilities but also selected Veeam to protect its Microsoft 365 environment, backing up emails and data for 22,000 users. With a local backup, the company reduced the risk of losing or delaying access to data essential for collaboration.

WienIT is now looking to adopt Veeam Threat Center to further harden its cyber defenses. This platform simplifies patch management and audit-readiness, offering WienIT a relentless, near-real-time assurance that regulatory benchmarks aren’t just met but continuously exceeded.

“Our previous solution did not support automated backup verification,” said Michael Dexheimer. “We’ve changed that with Veeam SureBackup, which verifies a random sample of backups every day, giving us great peace of mind. By uncovering any issues with our backups in near-real time, Veeam ensures we’re comprehensively protected and better prepared for NIS2.”

Complacency risk

While many organizations have taken steps to ensure they’re prepared, for others, complacency remains a real and dangerous risk.

Organizations that have enjoyed several years without a major security incident often grow complacent, seeing some compliance measures as costly or unnecessary overhead. “If it isn’t broken, why fix it?” becomes the mindset, potentially leaving critical vulnerabilities unaddressed.

Cybercriminals evolve, however, and regulations tighten in response; what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work tomorrow.

A breach targeting backup repositories can destroy an organization’s ability to recover, undermining both operational continuity and regulatory compliance and potentially resulting in devastating financial, reputational, and legal consequences.

Resilience strategies must evolve continuously. This means embracing technologies such as automation, real-time monitoring, and comprehensive data protection solutions that not only safeguard information but also streamline compliance.

By joining forces with trusted partners like Veeam, organizations not only remain a step ahead of threats and regulations, but also of their competitors.