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Blog
17Jul 2026
Data backup and recovery used to be an insurance policy you rarely thought about. Today, it is a frontline defense. Ransomware crews now hunt down and destroy backups before they encrypt production data, because a good backup is the one thing that lets you refuse to pay. As a result, how you protect and restore your data matters more than ever.
In the weeks ahead, we are launching a series on modern data protection across both on-premises systems and public cloud services. That series will draw on the Slide.tech and Datto platforms that OPUS represents. First, though, this post sets the foundation. Below, we cover the best practices every organization should follow, and why an immutable backup is now non-negotiable.
For years, a nightly backup to a local device felt like enough. That assumption no longer holds. Attackers now target backup systems on purpose, and they often sit inside a network for days before striking. Consequently, any backup connected to your network can be encrypted or deleted right alongside your live data.
The move to the cloud added a second blind spot. Many teams assume that Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or their cloud provider quietly backs everything up. In reality, those providers protect their own infrastructure, not your data. Therefore, the job of backing up and recovering your information still rests with you.
This post also anchors our upcoming three-part series on building an AI-ready security strategy. “How to Build an AI-Ready Security Strategy (Part 1): Know the Threats” goes live on July 20 and maps the AI-powered attacks now aimed at small and mid-sized businesses. “Part 2: Choosing an AI-Native Security Platform” follows on July 22 and explains how to select defenses that counter machine-speed attacks with machine-speed responses. Finally, “Part 3: A Roadmap for Small and Mid-Sized Businesses” arrives on July 24 with a practical 90-day implementation plan.
Even so, no defense stops every attack. AI has made intrusions faster, stealthier, and easier to scale. For that reason, data backup and recovery forms the recovery foundation beneath the whole strategy. If an attacker slips past your prevention and detection layers, an immutable backup lets your organization restore clean data, resume operations, and refuse any ransom demand. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework makes the same point, since Recover stands alongside Protect and Detect as a core function of any complete program. In short, prevention and detection keep attackers out, while recovery keeps you in business.
Most sound strategies start with the classic 3-2-1 rule. In short, you keep three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy stored off-site. However, ransomware has pushed the industry further, toward the 3-2-1-1-0 approach. It adds one immutable or air-gapped copy and zero recovery errors, confirmed through testing. Notably, CISA now endorses this stronger model in its #StopRansomware guidance.
Beyond the rule itself, these generally accepted best practices should anchor any program:
Together, these habits turn data backup and recovery from a checkbox into genuine resilience. Moreover, they are increasingly what cyber-insurers and auditors expect to see before they will cover you.
An immutable backup is a copy that no one can change, encrypt, or delete for a set retention period. That protection holds even against an attacker who steals full administrator credentials. Technically, storage systems enforce it with write-once, read-many (WORM) rules.
This matters for one simple reason. Modern ransomware goes after your backups first, precisely to remove your escape route. If your only copies can be altered, they can be destroyed. By contrast, an immutable copy stays intact, so you keep a clean recovery point and can restore without paying a ransom. A resilient data backup and recovery plan therefore depends on immutability, which is also why many cyber-insurance carriers now require it before they will underwrite a policy.
Strong data backup and recovery has to span both worlds. On premises, that means fast local recovery from an appliance, backed by an off-site, immutable cloud copy. In the public cloud, it means respecting the shared responsibility model. The provider keeps the platform running, while you protect the data inside it.
Remember, too, that replication is not backup. A synced copy of a corrupted or deleted file is simply a corrupted or deleted file in two places. For SaaS data in particular, such as Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and OneDrive, you need an independent backup that you control and can restore to a specific point in time.
OPUS builds its data protection services on two platforms designed for exactly these challenges.
Slide.tech is a modern, security-first business continuity and disaster recovery platform. Founded by Datto’s original creator, it was built from a clean codebase, and it encrypts data in transit and at rest by default. Its appliances scale from small offices up to rack-mounted capacity for larger sites.
Datto delivers an all-in-one backup and disaster recovery solution, backed by an immutable, geographically distributed cloud. Features such as Cloud Deletion Defense and ransomware detection guard your recovery points, while AI-powered verification confirms that backups will actually restore.
Both platforms share one philosophy: keep an immutable copy, make recovery fast, and assume attackers will target the backups.
This post is only the starting point. Over the coming weeks, our data protection series will go deeper into securing information on premises and across public cloud services, with practical guidance built around Slide.tech and Datto. In the meantime, if you want to review your current backup posture, talk to the OPUS team or explore our data backup services.
This post was researched and compiled from the following sources:
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