The majority of businesses couldn’t survive three days of downtime

Most businesses would fall apart after three days of total downtime, according to Veeam, and executives are woefully unprepared for AI-driven risks.

According to its latest Data Resilience survey of more than 4,000 C-Suite and senior IT leaders, Veeam said data outages are now a bigger concern than the threat of a recession.

More than eight-in-ten organizations have experienced outages that weren't resolved immediately in the past five years. External cyber attacks were the most widespread cause, at 26%, closely followed by human error at 23% and system or hardware failure at 16%.

IT leaders are conscious of growing risks, the survey found, with 67% citing ransomware as their biggest threat looking ahead. AI-related risks, however, are starting to cause concerns.

Data leaks, algorithmic bias, and uncontrolled automation were cited by 29% of respondents as a key challenge for many moving forward.

The fallout from cyber incidents isn't just technical, either. More than half (57%) of leaders said employees had resigned, threatened to resign, or experienced burnout following major cyber incidents, with lost productivity and wellbeing among the top unexpected impacts.

Firms aren’t confident of data recovery

While nearly half (47%) of organizations expect they'll fall victim to a significant data breach or cyber attack, only 32% believe full recovery of critical data and business operations is very likely.

As a result, 62% of leaders see data outages as a bigger financial threat to their business than an economic recession.

“In today’s AI-powered world, trust in data is every organization’s most valuable asset. Backups are the last line of truth in a world where AI can fabricate, ransomware can encrypt, and a single misconfiguration can cascade across an entire infrastructure in minutes,” said Dave Russell, senior vice president and head of strategy at Veeam.

“In the AI era, it’s not just about recovering your data – it’s about keeping your business functioning and thriving with the trusted data it needs. Too many organizations are still managing risk reactively, when real innovation – and real trust – begin with a foundation of resilient, secure data.”

Nearly half (44%) of IT leaders said they weren't confident that their organizations could recover all critical data within 24 hours of a major cyber attack or data loss event, according to Veeam.

Despite this, though, 38% of boards or leadership teams surveyed have never formally discussed AI-driven or emerging attack types.

Only 31% of boards review resilience readiness, such as recovery KPIs or failover results, on a quarterly basis, and responsibility for resilience is often split across CIOs, CISOs, Heads of Risk, and COOs.

Meanwhile, fewer than half of organizations surveyed (49%) link executive KPIs to resilience outcomes, and only 24% of leaders regularly take part in crisis simulations for data loss or disruption.

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