Veeam Software has released the results of its latest Veeam Data Resilience Survey of C-suite and senior IT leaders. The survey report says that organizations can only realize the promise of AI when data is resilient, secure, and governed, yet most boards and executives are unprepared for growing AI-driven risks.
Additionally, Veeam’s research shows that executive concern over data outages now outweighs fears of economic recession, underscoring why backup and recovery planning must be top priorities for every organization.
Key findings include:
Top threats
Ransomware and cyber attacks top the list of threats identified by business leaders, with 67% citing these as risks they “dread most in the year ahead.”
AI-related risks – including data leaks, algorithm bias, and uncontrolled automation – rank next at 29%, signalling that emerging AI-driven threats are already a mainstream boardroom concern.
Recovery capabilities
While nearly half of organizations (47%) anticipate a significant data breach or cyber attack at some point in the future, only 32% believe full recovery of critical data and business operations is very likely. As a result, 62% of leaders increasingly view data outages as a greater financial threat to their business than an economic recession, making resilience an urgent business priority.
76% of organizations report that they would not survive more than three days of downtime if their organization suffered a complete data outage tomorrow.
Nearly half (44%) of IT leaders are not confident that their organizations could recover all critical data within 24 hours of a major cyber attack or data loss event.
Risk and resilience governance failures
Despite growing AI adoption, boards and leadership teams are falling short in governing AI risk and resilience.
38% of boards or leadership teams surveyed have never formally discussed AI-driven or emerging attack types, leaving organizations exposed and undermining trust in their AI capabilities.
Only 31% of boards review resilience readiness, such as recovery KPIs or failover results, on a quarterly basis, and responsibility for resilience is often split across CIOs, CISOs, heads of risk, and COOs.
Less than half of organizations surveyed (49%) link executive KPIs to resilience outcomes, and only 24% of leaders regularly participate in crisis simulations for data loss or disruption.
Without clear ownership and consistent accountability, organizations risk reactive responses to threats rather than proactive, trust-driven strategies for AI and data resilience.
The human cost
The fallout from cyber incidents is not only technical – 57% of leaders reported employees have resigned, threatened to resign, or burned out following major cyber incidents, with lost productivity and wellbeing among the top unexpected impacts.
About the survey
The Veeam Data Resilience Survey was conducted by Censuswide, among a sample of 4,283 CISOs, CFOs, CIOs, VPs of IT, and IT directors in companies with at least 250 employees in the UK, USA, Germany, France, Australia, and New Zealand. The data was collected in November 2025.
