In 2026, the question at the forefront of IT leaders strategic planning is no longer how can we avoid being hit with a cyber event, rather, it’s all about how fast can you recover when you are hit.
World Backup Day (March 31st) serves as an annual reminder that data loss – whether caused by cyberattacks, system failures, or plain old-fashioned human error can have severe financial and reputational consequences. In an era where data and digital operations underpin nearly every aspect of business, the ability to recover quickly from disruption has become a defining factor of long-term resilience and is driving regulatory change (NIS2, DORA etc) in Ireland.
Growing Cyber and Operational Risks in Ireland
Irish businesses are facing a rapidly intensifying threat landscape, driven not only by heightened geopolitical uncertainty, which is fuelling state sponsored cyber activity, supply chain instability, and increased targeting of Western economies, but also by the accelerating commercialisation of cybercriminal operations. Cybercrime has evolved into a mature, profit driven industry, with ransomware as a service, initial access brokers, and sophisticated phishing kits lowering the barrier to entry for attackers. This combination of geopolitical tension and an increasingly organised cybercrime marketplace is creating a perfect storm of risk for organisations across Ireland, regardless of size or sector.
Irish businesses are now deeply digitally dependent, meaning downtime, whether caused by ransomware, system failure, or human mistake, has a direct and escalating financial impact on productivity and service delivery.
As organisations embed AI into core business processes, we are seeing the attack surface expanding to include AI models, training data, agents, and supply chains. AI accelerated phishing and automated reconnaissance has shortened the time from initial access to impact putting pressure on Security teams unlike anything we have seen before.
These trends highlight a simple truth: without robust, tested backups, businesses are one incident away from significant disruption.
Ergo’s high level recommendations for Irish organisations
To mark World Backup Day, we are encouraging businesses of all sizes but particularly SME’s to take practical steps to strengthen their resilience:
1. Adopt the 321 Backup Strategy
Maintain at least three copies of your data, stored on two different media, with one copy offsite or in the cloud. This reduces the risk of a single point of failure.
2. Know your data landscape
Understand your data landscape so you can ensure that you are backing up all of your critical data
3. Test Backups Regularly
A backup is only as good as its ability to be restored. Schedule routine recovery tests to ensure data can be retrieved quickly and accurately when needed.
4. Protect Backups from Cyber Threats
Use immutable storage, encryption, and access controls to safeguard backups from ransomware and unauthorised access.
5. Integrate Backups into Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning
Backups should be part of a broader resilience strategy that includes incident response, disaster recovery, and operational continuity planning.
6. Educate Employees
Human error remains a leading cause of data loss. Regular training helps staff recognise threats and understand their role in protecting organisational data.
7. Backup 3rd party data
Don’t forget to back-up your data in SaaS-based platforms like Microsoft 365 (Exchange Oline, OneDrive, Sharepoint, Teams) as Microsoft is responsible for the service, not the data.
8. Backup your Identity
If identity breaks, everything breaks and you cannot get access to your applications and data. For instance, the Microsoft Entra ID service is protected by Microsoft, but they do confirm that recoverability from unintended deletions, cyber-attacks and misconfigurations is the customer’s responsibility.
World Backup Day is more than a reminder; it’s a call to action. By taking proactive steps now, Irish businesses can reduce risk, protect their operations, and build the resilience needed to thrive in an increasingly unpredictable digital environment.
Our team are here to help with your cyber resilience and cyber recovery, contact your Account Director today to organise a *free Cyber Resilience workshop.
(*offer for existing clients only)
