There’s no surprise that cyberattacks are frequent and for most organizations they have become inevitable. According to the 2025 Veeam Ransomware Trends Report, 69% of organizations experienced at least one ransomware attack in the past year, and many suffered more than one. As cyberthreats become more frequent, sophisticated and pervasive, organizations face a stark reality: simply reacting to incidents is no longer enough to ensure resilience or business continuity.
Why Reactive Security Falls Short
The traditional model of cybersecurity – detect, respond, recover – was shaped in a different era. Attackers now move faster, target backups to prevent recovery, and often exploit human mistakes via social engineering as much as technical gaps. Reactive security measures are fundamentally about addressing problems after they occur, responding to incidents, managing customer fallout, remediating compromised systems, recovering lost data, and often navigating regulatory fines and legal repercussions. While these steps are necessary in the wake of a cyberattack, relying on them as your primary “defense” is a misnomer. It’s not a defense at all, but rather a costly and risky response, attempting damage control after the fact. Organizations are forced to go on the offensive response to repair, explain, and restore, rather than preventing the attack in the first place. Most times, that approach is too late.
When an attack unfolds, security teams are forced into crisis mode, scrambling to assess the scope of the incident often with incomplete information, while attackers cover their tracks. IT resources are quickly diverted from strategic projects to emergency remediation, sometimes for weeks or months, disrupting productivity and business operations. The damage doesn’t end internally; organizations must communicate with affected customers and partners, offer compensation or credit monitoring, and work to rebuild trust, a process that can be both expensive and damaging to the brand.
Restoring critical data becomes another challenge, especially if backups have been compromised or deleted. Without immutable backups, there’s no guarantee that recovery points are clean and reliable. On top of this, regulatory bodies may step in with fines for compliance failures, and legal teams must manage costly lawsuits and settlements. All of these costs – financial, operational, and reputational – can quickly mount and have lasting consequences.
Relying solely on reactive strategies also leaves organizations vulnerable to repeat attacks. If root causes aren’t addressed, threat actors may exploit known vulnerabilities or weaknesses in recovery processes. Moreover, regulatory requirements now demand proactive controls, and failure to implement these can result in additional scrutiny and penalties. Ultimately, a reactive security approach is a cycle of playing catch-up, focused on damage control rather than true prevention. To break free from this unsustainable approach, organizations must prioritize proactive security measures that anticipate and neutralize threats before they disrupt business.
Proactive Security: A New Mandate
Cyber resilience is about readiness and be able to successfully bounce back. It means planning ahead and investing in proactive measures like monitoring, assessments, testing, controls and training, to prevent a crisis. But if and when a crisis does occur, your organization is ready. Shifting to a proactive security approach means anticipating threats, mitigating risks before damage occurs, and building readiness into every layer of the organization. This approach rests on several non-negotiable pillars:
- Immutable Backups: Backups that cannot be altered or deleted by attackers are essential for guaranteeing clean recovery points after an incident.
- AI-Powered Threat Detection: Leveraging artificial intelligence to detect malicious activity early, before it can escalate and cause widespread harm.
- Automated Compliance Checks and Reporting: Continuously monitoring and documenting compliance ensures organizations can meet regulatory requirements and demonstrate due diligence at any time.
- Incident and Ransomware Response Playbooks with Regular Testing: Establishing detailed response plans for multiple scenarios and practicing them regularly via simulations and tabletop exercises enables teams to act swiftly and effectively when real threats occur.
The 2025 ransomware landscape demonstrates that even with increasing threats, organizations can improve their ability to respond and recover, if they are prepared. Across the 1,300 organizations surveyed, several real-world patterns and examples stand out.
First, fast and coordinated incident response is critical. Organizations that had robust, well-rehearsed response strategies, including clear roles, defined chains of command, and rehearsed playbooks, fared better in minimizing downtime and data loss. However, while 98% of organizations had some form of ransomware playbook, less than half had verified backup procedures or assured the cleanliness of their backups. Those who incorporated these technical elements, such as regular backup verification and alternative infrastructure arrangements, recovered more quickly and with less business impact.
Secure backup recovery remains a major challenge. An overwhelming 89% of organizations had their backup repositories targeted by ransomware actors, and on average, 34% of backup repositories were modified or deleted by attackers. Despite this, only .
Organizations that could verify the integrity of their backups before recovery experienced fewer instances of reinfection and faster returns to normal operations.
The report also highlights the importance of clear communication and decision-making processes. Only 26% of organizations had a pre-defined process for making ransom payment decisions, and just 30% had an established chain of command for handling attacks.
Incident response experience also shows that companies working with expert third parties, such as incident response or negotiation specialists, were far less likely to pay ransoms and more likely to recover their data. In fact, organizations leveraging these experts were likely to pay a ransom than those that managed an incident on their own.
Finally, organizations that treated each attack as a learning opportunity, by strengthening employee training, updating software policies, and improving technical controls, became more resilient over time. For example, organizations have increasingly transitioned to immutable backups, cloud- or managed-services, and more advanced detection and response solutions following attacks.
The front lines of ransomware resilience show that organizations can successfully recover by building the readiness, technical controls, and collaborative culture needed to minimize damage and accelerate recovery when an attack inevitably occurs.
Taking the First Step Toward Proactive Security
Moving from reactive to proactive requires honest self-assessment:
- Are your backups truly protected from tampering or deletion?
- Do you have threat detection capabilities in your backup environments?
- Do you have early warning systems to detect suspicious activity before it escalates?
- Is your team empowered and trained to respond quickly and decisively?
- Are compliance requirements integrated into daily operations, not just audits?
Conclusion: A Call to Action
The gap between risk and readiness must be addressed with proactive measures. By embracing a security posture with proactive actions that are grounded in strategy, technology, and culture, organizations can significantly reduce risk, minimize business disruption, and build true resilience against cyberattacks. Veeam is here to help you along your proactive security journey, enabling you to turn reactive into proactive with key tools and best practices for threat detection, interactive AI reporting, Identifiers of compromise detection, enterprise security integrations with the likes of Palo Alto Networks, Splunk, CrowdStrike, Microsoft, Fortinet and many more.
Where to Learn More
Ready to take the next step toward a truly proactive security posture? Unlock how Veeam is addressing the evolution of cybersecurity by tuning into our virtual launch event on Nov. 19. Be among the first to discover how Veeam’s newest product innovations deliver the latest advancements to help organizations anticipate, withstand, and recover from the most advanced threats. Register today and don’t miss what’s next in data protection.
Need a more in-depth approach? Veeam offers Cyber Security services, cyber extortion response with Coveware, and professional services to help you along the way. Explore the ultimate resilience reality check, Veeam’s Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM). The model works backward from real-world outcomes, highlighting industry best practices to help organizations benchmark resilience, find maturity gaps, and prioritize improvements in backup, recovery, and security.
The post From Reactive to Proactive: Strengthen Security Posture in the Era of Cyberattacks appeared first on Veeam Software Official Blog.
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