Keepit: Outages Fail to Drive Recovery Testing Gains

High-profile global outages aren’t changing how organizations prepare for disruption, according to new research from Keepit.

The company’s 2026 Annual Data Report finds that even widely publicized cloud and security incidents have not led to increased recovery testing, exposing a persistent gap between risk awareness and operational readiness, especially among SMBs.

Major outages fail to trigger recovery testing increases

The Keepit Annual Data Report 2026 states that high-profile global outages, including major cloud and security incidents, did not lead to increased recovery testing. According to the report, this suggests that even visible disruptions rarely prompt validation of recovery readiness.

Overall, the Keepit report showed that recovery readiness is evolving and revealed that recovery practices remain a work in progress for many organizations, particularly smaller ones, while larger enterprises increasingly demonstrate greater operational maturity through active recovery practices.

SMBs lag in restore activity and identity system testing

Small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are less likely to restore regularly, with 72 percent having not performed a single restore in 2025. For bulk restore activities, the report found that approximately 78% of SMBs performed no bulk restore jobs.

Among other key findings from the report are:

• 9 in 10 enterprises have validated bulk recovery, demonstrating maturity in their disaster recovery preparedness.
• Identity systems are tested 4 times less often than productivity systems, even though losing identity access can prevent access to all other SaaS applications.
• 90 percent of restores are single-file downloads, indicating that simple data loss incidents are most common and that IT administrators appreciate the ability to perform granular, immediate recovery. 

Keepit: recovery maturity depends on routine testing

Further, Keepit highlights that a significant insight in the report is how behavior impacts restores. The report details how resilience is built through practice, not additional tools, and how everyday restores demonstrate how organizations build confidence and recovery capability over time.

The report found that organizations that make recovery a routine, repeatable process are better prepared to restore the right data, in the right order, and at the right scale, when supported by structured testing and guided recovery.

“The data shows that organizations are actively using their backups and, at scale, developing real recovery maturity – especially among larger enterprises that routinely validate bulk recovery,” said Jakob Østergaard, CTO at Keepit. 

“At the same time, the findings make it clear that confidence in recovery is built through practice. Simple, everyday restores are an important foundation, but structured testing and guided recovery are what turn backup into a repeatable, dependable capability. Backup is only effective when teams know they can recover the right data, in the right order, under real world pressure.”

Report draws on global backup and recovery behavior data

Keepit notes that the report is based on aggregated, anonymized behavioral data from the company’s production backup environment during 2025.

The report examines observable patterns across business segments and application categories, including: 

• restore frequency
• restore types and timing 
• dataset behavior 
• user interaction 

It also tracks activity across all active Keepit data center regions, including Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, the U.K., the U.S., Canada, and Australia.

Earlier this year, Keepit expanded its global channel organization to accelerate partner-driven growth and reinforce its channel-led go-to-market strategy. Read more about the restructure to improve consistency, enablement, and partner-led growth.