World Backup Day is a well-meaning nudge. It’s a chance to pause, check your backups, and make sure your data is protected. It can be a good reminder to verify that you’ve got the essentials in place.

But in our line of work, we’ve unfortunately seen how easily organizations can be lulled into a false sense of security simply because backups exist. Backups are important, but they’re not a safety net on their own. And the assumptions organizations make about what those backups will do in a crisis are where things start to fall apart.

At Fenix24, we don’t just talk about backups. We deal with what happens when they fail. Yes, often they do fail. Most companies that call us have backups. They check the right boxes… but when the real test comes, when that phone rings at 3 AM, the backups don’t measure up. Let’s talk about how and why that happens.

The Backup Lie You Might Be Telling Yourself

“We’re covered. We have backups.”

Maybe they’re even tested. Maybe they’re segmented from production. You might even have immutable snapshots and multiple recovery points. Here’s the hard truth: most of the organizations we support after a ransomware attack thought they were covered, too.

They weren’t.

Backups are often treated like the finish line. Once they’re set up, organizations assume the job is done. Having backups, however, isn’t the same as being able to use them. Your data might be backed up—great. Can your environment be rebuilt, cleanly and quickly, when every minute of downtime is bleeding revenue, reputation, and operational control?

The problem isn’t the backup files. The problem is recovery.

And that’s where most strategies fall short.

Backups Don’t Equal Recovery

You can have daily snapshots, replication, and immutable storage and still find yourself offline for days or weeks. Why? Because recovery requires more than access to data. It demands speed, precision, and coordination across systems, teams, and infrastructure.

Here’s some of what recovery actually takes:

• A known-good restore point. Not just any backup. One that hasn’t been corrupted, encrypted, or overwritten. If attackers were in your system for weeks, how far back do you need to go?
• A tested plan for sequencing systems and dependencies. Recovery isn’t about flipping switches. If you bring systems online in the wrong order, critical dependencies can fail. Do your teams know what gets restored first, and what has to wait?
• Infrastructure that can support a fast rebuild. You can’t restore production workloads from thin air. You need available, hardened infrastructure ready to host recovered environments, and that infrastructure needs to be stood up quickly, securely, and at scale.
• A team that can work together. Recovery isn’t a solo game. It requires cross-functional coordination between IT, security, legal, comms, execs, and vendors. Who owns what? Who’s making decisions? Who’s tracking and communicating progress?
• When board members, customers, regulators, and even the media are demanding answers, your team doesn’t have the luxury to learn as they go. You need rehearsed, reliable execution.

Backups are passive. Recovery is active. If your organization hasn’t pressure-tested how fast and how well it can recover, you may not be as prepared as you think.

This World Backup Day, Ask Harder Questions

It’s easy to ask, “Do we have backups?” The more valuable questions, the ones that determine whether you’ll recover or not, go deeper.

On this World Backup Day, take the opportunity to challenge your assumptions. Ask the questions that will expose real risks before an attacker does:

• When’s the last time we tested a full recovery, from start to finish?
• Are our backups segmented and immutable, or just logically separated?
• Do we know our actual RTO/RPO, or are we relying on best-case assumptions?
• Who owns recovery in this organization?
• If we had to rebuild everything tomorrow, how would we do it?

These aren’t hypotheticals. For many organizations, they were painful questions that got asked (and answered) the hard way.

What We See at Fenix24

Fenix24 does recovery every day. We bring companies back from ransomware attacks and destructive cyber events. That means rebuilding networks, restoring systems, and minimizing downtime in some of the most high-pressure environments imaginable.

We’ve worked with large enterprises, healthcare systems, law firms, financial institutions—you name it. Many of them had tools and strategies in place: backup software, segmented storage, even written recovery plans. But when it came time to act, they weren’t ready. Why?

They hadn’t practiced. They hadn’t mapped out the real-world complexity of recovery:

• Which systems must come online first?
• What interdependencies will create bottlenecks?
• How do you coordinate recovery access across infrastructure, security, legal, compliance, and business ops while under attack?

Recovery isn’t a single moment. It’s a series of high-stakes decisions, each with downstream consequences.

A Better Way Forward

Backups matter. But they are only the beginning of the conversation. Use World Backup Day as a springboard to ask hard questions, expose hidden risks, and test your assumptions. Build a recovery strategy that works both in theory and in the real-world conditions of an attack. Test it. Break it. Fix it. Assign ownership.

You want to be able to move, not scramble, when everything is on the line.

If you’re not sure how your recovery plan would hold up under pressure, talk to us. Fenix24 can help you assess your current state and build toward true recovery readiness. Call us at 1-855-FENIX24 (1-855-336-4924) or email rapidresponse@fenix24.com to learn more.