Business continuity is a major focus for nearly every organization — but the real test often comes during an actual disruption. Whether it’s a ransomware event, accidental data deletion, or system outage, many organizations discover they don’t have a full picture of their recovery readiness until they’re in the middle of a crisis.
To help organizations strengthen their data protection posture, Veeam developed the industry’s first Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM) in collaboration with McKinsey, supported by insights from George Westerman of MIT, Palo Alto Networks, and Splunk; and was informed by input from over 500 enterprise executives. As data volumes grow and environments stretch across cloud, on-premises, and the edge, many teams find themselves struggling with fragmented tools, increased compliance pressure, and unclear ownership.
The DRMM was built to address these challenges. Through this model, organizations can better understand their current posture, define a path to improve it, and quantify the ROI of their investments in the people, processes, strategy, and technology that move them forward.
Why Enterprises Need the DRMM Now
The DRMM defines four maturity horizons, each representing a step forward in how well an organization can prepare for, withstand, and recover from disruption. The higher the maturity horizon is, the more integrated and effective the practices become. Research revealed that 74% of participating enterprises fell into the lowest two horizons of the DRMM, meaning they lack the maturity needed to recover quickly and confidently from a disruption. In addition, organizations with more mature resilience practices demonstrated measurable advantages — including faster recovery times, reduced data loss, and greater operational continuity during any disruption.
Average Outcome Differences by Horizon
These performance gains aren’t theoretical — they’re already being realized by leading organizations. For example, a global bank cut their outage costs by $300,000 per incident by automating recovery and reducing mean time to recovery (MTTR). A large healthcare provider achieved $5 million in savings per outage by implementing quarterly recovery exercises and reducing outage durations from hours to minutes. These are the kinds of transformational results organizations are realizing by applying the recommendations and practices from the DRMM.
Resilience is a Priority. Security is the Focus. Execution is Lagging.
Data resilience is now front-and-center for enterprise IT. In fact, it’s ranked as the #2 strategic priority for the next two years — second only to cost reduction. And when it comes to what matters most with resilience, data security tops the list, followed by backup and recovery.
Ranking of Top IT Priorities Over the Past Two Years and in the Next Two Years
But here’s the challenge: While the priorities are clear, readiness often isn’t.
Many organizations — possibly including yours — have made meaningful progress on backup and recovery. However, far fewer have actually built a complete, consistent approach that connects strategy, intelligence, and team coordination across the business.
You may have seen some of these reported gaps firsthand:
- Only 50% of organizations meet their recovery time objectives (RTOs) during real-world disruptions.
- Just 69% actively monitor backup jobs and align them with business and compliance goals.
- Only 42% have adopted intelligence-driven practices like anomaly detection or automated response.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone! And that’s exactly what the DRMM is here to help with; giving you a clearer view of where you are today and what you should focus on next to build greater confidence, control, and coordination across your resilience strategy.
How Can the DRMM Help Your Organization?
The DRMM is designed to give you a clear, data-driven view of where your organization stands today — and where you need to go. Whether you’re looking to validate your current strategy, identify blind spots, or prioritize investments, the DRMM gives you a structured way to move forward with confidence. If you’re responsible for better business outcomes, reducing risk, or improving recovery capabilities, DRMM can help you make clear, measurable progress.
Here are five areas where the DRMM can provide a clear starting point for building stronger resilience:
- Clarify ownership and strategy: Resilience efforts often stall without clear leadership. Use the DRMM to define roles, assign accountability, and align efforts across IT, security, and risk teams.
- Test plans, not just tools: A written recovery plan isn’t enough. The DRMM encourages frequent testing — especially after new deployments — so teams know what to expect and how to respond under pressure.
- Reduce manual steps where possible: Manual recovery is time-consuming and error prone. The DRMM highlights opportunities to automate tasks like backup verification, failover, and alerting to improve speed and consistency.
- Track impact, not just activity: Metrics like RTO and MTTR are useful, but only if they’re tied to business goals. The DRMM can help you define meaningful metrics and track improvement over time.
- Make resilience a core responsibility: High-performing organizations have named owners for resilience, often at the executive level. DRMM participants are nearly 50% more likely to reach advanced maturity when the effort has clear sponsorship.
If this call to action inspired you, I invite you to learn more about the model by downloading the Veeam Data Resilience Maturity Model e-book. There are practical insights throughout that you can take back to your organization to drive better resilience for whatever comes next.
About the Research
The Veeam report, in collaboration with McKinsey, is based on a comprehensive survey of 500 senior IT, information security, and operations leaders from large enterprises, coupled with insights from over 50 interviews with C-level executives and IT leaders. It highlights the critical need for organizations to prioritize data resilience as part of their overall business strategy.
The post Introducing the Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM): A Framework for Advancing Enterprise Data Resilience appeared first on Veeam Software Official Blog.
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