Every day, businesses across Europe lose critical data to ransomware, hardware failures or simple human errors. According to aggregated data from the National Archives and Records Administration and Gartner, roughly 60% of SMBs that suffer a major IT disaster close within six months. The Rapporto Clusit 2026 confirms the scale of the problem: 37.8% of surveyed Italian SMBs experienced at least one cyberattack, yet only 41% have a structured and tested business backup strategy. A sobering figure for any business owner or IT manager, because it is not a matter of “if” it will happen, but “when”.
Why SMBs underestimate the risk
Most small and medium businesses operate under a dangerous assumption: “it won’t happen to us”. The data tells a different story. Ransomware attacks targeting SMBs have increased by 40% over the past two years, and the average cost of downtime for a small company exceeds 10,000 euros per day.
The problem is not purely technological. Many companies still rely on manual backups to a local NAS or, worse, copies on external hard drives managed “whenever someone remembers”. No regular restore tests, no monitoring, no documented strategy. When disaster strikes (a cryptolocker encrypting everything, a fire in the server room, an employee accidentally deleting a database), it becomes painfully clear that the backup does not work, is not up to date, or simply does not exist.
Building a modern business backup strategy
An effective business backup in 2026 can no longer be a hard drive in a drawer. The reference framework remains the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of data, on two different media types, with one copy off-site.
But today additional safeguards are essential:
- Immutable backups: copies that cannot be modified or deleted for a defined period, not even by a compromised administrator. This is the only real defence against ransomware that actively seeks and destroys backups.
- Logical or physical air-gap: at least one copy of the data must be isolated from the corporate network, so an attacker who penetrates the infrastructure cannot reach every backup.
- End-to-end encryption: backup data must be encrypted both in transit and at rest.
- Regular restore tests: a backup that has never been tested is not a backup, it is wishful thinking.
Solutions like those offered by Acronis make it possible to implement these principles even in SMB environments, with lightweight agents and centralised cloud management, without requiring a dedicated ten-person IT team.
Disaster recovery vs. backup: a distinction that matters
Many businesses treat “backup” and “disaster recovery” as synonyms. They are not, and confusing them can prove costly.
Backup is the copy of data. Disaster recovery is the complete plan to get back up and running: it includes backups, but also procedures, roles, timelines and emergency infrastructure. Having a perfect backup but no disaster recovery plan means owning the bricks without the blueprint.
A DR plan answers concrete questions: who does what in the first two hours after an incident? Where do you restore systems if the office is inaccessible? How long does it take to become operational again? These answers are not improvised during an emergency: they are prepared in advance, documented and tested at least once a year.
RTO and RPO: two acronyms every business owner should know
When discussing business continuity, two parameters drive every decision:
- RPO (Recovery Point Objective): how much data can you afford to lose? If backups run daily, the RPO is 24 hours. That means in a disaster you would lose up to a full day of work. For a company issuing hundreds of invoices daily, that could be unacceptable.
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective): how long can you afford to be down? If restoring everything takes 48 hours, your business will be offline for two days. Clients left without responses, orders blocked, production halted.
Defining realistic RPO and RTO is the first step towards properly sizing your business backup and disaster recovery strategy. Not every application has the same criticality: email, ERP and accounting systems deserve different levels of protection compared to the photo archive from the last corporate event.
NIS2 and GDPR: backup is no longer optional
With the NIS2 directive in force and GDPR well established, backup and operational continuity are no longer recommended best practices, they are legal obligations. Italy’s ACN (Agenzia per la Cybersicurezza Nazionale) determinations in 2025 clarified that companies in essential and important sectors must demonstrate concrete data protection and recovery measures.
Even SMBs not directly within the NIS2 scope may be involved as suppliers to regulated entities. And GDPR explicitly requires measures to ensure “the ability to restore the availability and access to personal data in a timely manner in the event of a physical or technical incident” (Art. 32).
Not having a documented and tested disaster recovery plan exposes the company to fines, but above all to reputational damage that an SMB can rarely afford.
Practical checklist: where to start
If reading this article has made you realise your company has gaps, here are the concrete steps to take:
- Inventory critical data: identify which systems and data are essential for daily operations.
- Define RPO and RTO for each critical system, involving department heads.
- Audit current backups: do they exist? Are they automated? When was the last restore test?
- Implement the 3-2-1 rule with at least one immutable, off-site copy.
- Document a disaster recovery plan with roles, procedures and emergency contacts.
- Schedule semi-annual restore tests and record the results.
- Review compliance with GDPR and, if applicable, NIS2.
Handling all of this internally can be complex for an SMB with limited IT resources. That is why many businesses choose to rely on a specialised partner that manages business backup, monitoring and disaster recovery as a managed service, with clear SLAs and continuous support.
Need support on this topic? Contact us for a free consultation, let’s assess your company’s situation together.
Stay updated every week on cybersecurity, AI and technology for SMBs: subscribe to our newsletter.