I’ve Watched Companies Bet Everything on Untested SaaS Backups. Here’s What Actually HappensEvery day I help organizations build stronger backup strategies when they come to us for help after a recent failure to recover from a ransomware attack. The pattern is consistent.Their systems were encrypted. They needed their data back immediately. And they had been confident their backups to save them up to that point. Only, the solutions they were relying on failed.The first thing I ask is, “When did you last test a full restore before the attack?”The silence tells me everything.The Confidence Gap Nobody Talks About78% of organizations targeted by ransomware paid the ransom—and 72% of those paid multiple times. That sounds reassuring until you see what happens when attacks actually occur.This isn’t about having backups. It’s about knowing whether those backups work when you need them most. The data shows a massive gap between confidence and reality.Only 24% of organizations have a mature disaster recovery plan that’s well-documented, tested, and updated. The rest? They’re hoping their backups work but haven’t proven it.What Recovery Actually CostsThe average organization takes 21 days to restore operations after a ransomware attack. Three weeks of downtime.The ransom itself? The average recovery cost excluding ransom payments reached $2.73 million in 2024, an increase of almost $1 million from the previous year.I’ve seen the math play out dozens of times. Downtime costs run nearly 50 times higher than ransom demands. A $50,000 ransom becomes a $2.5 million recovery bill.And here’s what really keeps me up at night: 60% of small businesses close within six months of a major cyberattack. The recovery timeline matters more than most people realize.The Problem Lives in Your Backups99% of state and local government organizations hit by ransomware said cybercriminals attempted to compromise their backups during the attack.Your backups are a target. Attackers know that organizations with working backups don’t pay ransoms. So they go after the backups first. But, if those organizations had effective ransomware protection on their live environment to begin with, they would never have been in this situation to begin with. The attack would be stopped and remediated, backups secure, and data restored in a matter of minutes or hours.This is usually the “aha moment” when we talk.Sadly, in Q4 2024, 84% of organizations that paid ransoms still couldn’t fully recover their data. They paid and lost anyway.About 50% of organizations only test their disaster recovery once a year or less, and 7% don’t conduct any testing at all. You wouldn’t board a plane that underwent safety checks twice a year. Why trust your business survival to the same schedule?What Changes the OutcomeOrganizations with intact, tested backups and incident response teams save an average of $2.66 million when they experience a disaster.Again, though, why let your entire live SaaS environment be encrypted by ransomware in the first place? This is a different approach I’m proud to offer clients: protect the live SaaS environment as part of your data protection strategy, and know you have tested, accurate, incremental backups waiting for you if you ever need them.The difference isn’t luck. It’s preparation.I’ve helped organizations go from ransomware detection to full recovery in under two hours. Not because we have magic technology, but because we built and tested the recovery path before the attack happened.You need to know three things right now:How long would a full restore actually take? Not in theory. In practice, with your current systems and data volume.Are your backups isolated from your production environment? If attackers can reach your backups through your network, you don’t have backups.When did you last run a complete recovery test? Not a file restore. A full system recovery under pressure.If you can’t answer these questions with specific numbers and recent dates, you’re gambling with your organization’s survival.The organizations that recover quickly made decisions before the attack. The ones that spend months in recovery made assumptions instead. Share this article Share this post on Linkedin Share this post on X Share this post on Facebook Share this post on Reddit Was this helpful? Yes No Submit Cancel Thanks for your feedback!