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ISG Research is happy to share insights gleaned from our latest Buyers Guide, an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings meet buyers’ requirements. The Data Recovery: ISG Research Buyers Guide is the distillation of a year of market and product research by ISG Research.
Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and 
Information Security (InfoSec) leaders face an ever-evolving cyber threat reality. As businesses rely more on digital infrastructures, the urgency to protect sensitive data and ensure operational integrity grows. A strategic approach that blends innovation with effective management of security technologies is essential. Utilizing advanced cybersecurity software tools is crucial for countering emerging threats and fortifying defenses against diverse cyber risks. Enterprises must grasp the capabilities and intricacies of these tools to safeguard valuable assets, enhance compliance and reduce security breaches. Data breaches can inflict significant financial and reputational damage, making proactive measures and incident response protocols vital for effective defense and recovery. This Buyers Guide offers insights to help enterprise security leaders make informed decisions on selecting and deploying critical cybersecurity technologies, ultimately improving their security posture and fostering a safer digital environment.
ISG Research defines data recovery as a critical component of modern data management strategies, aimed at helping enterprises manage data effectively while keeping it secure. In an era where data is one of the most valuable assets, robust data recovery strategies are essential for ensuring data protection and resilience against various threats, including cyberattacks, accidental deletions and hardware failures. These approaches provide enterprises with the ability to restore lost or corrupted data quickly, minimizing downtime and maintaining operational integrity.
Effective data recovery software incorporates continuous data protection techniques which enable real-time backup of data as changes occur. This approach allows enterprises to recover data to specific points in time, reducing the risk of data loss and enhancing business continuity. With features such as automated backup processes, snapshot recovery and cryptographic security measures, modern data management becomes more robust, safeguarding sensitive information from unauthorized access and ransomware attacks.
Data recovery strategies also facilitate compliance with regulatory requirements related to data protection, ensuring that enterprises safeguard critical information while remaining resilient in the face of potential crises. By integrating effective data recovery practices, enterprises can enhance their overall data governance framework, ensuring not only the quick restoration of lost data but also a proactive approach to securing and managing information assets. Ultimately, a comprehensive data recovery strategy is vital for empowering enterprises to stand strong against data incidents, ensuring continuity and resilience.
ISG asserts that by 2027, 3 in 4 enterprises will adopt a backup and recovery program enabling continuous data protection to maintain operational resilience and comply with regulations, mitigating potential crises.
A data recovery program is a vital component of an enterprise’s cybersecurity strategy,
directly supporting business goals by ensuring data integrity and availability. In an era where data is a key asset for decision-making and operational efficiency, safeguarding against data loss is paramount. Effective data recovery approaches enable enterprises to restore lost or corrupted data promptly, minimizing downtime and ensuring business continuity. In doing so, they help protect the enterprise against the financial and reputational consequences of data breaches or loss incidents.
Continuous data protection mechanisms allow enterprises to back up data in real time, reducing the risk of significant data loss and enhancing resilience. This capability enables enterprises to adhere to regulatory requirements related to data protection, thereby fostering trust among clients and stakeholders. Additionally, data recovery approaches empower enterprises to implement robust disaster recovery plans, simulating various scenarios to prepare for potential crises effectively. By ensuring rapid recovery from data loss incidents, enterprises can sustain operations without significant interruptions.
Furthermore, data recovery tools often incorporate advanced features such as data integrity checks and encryption, ensuring that recovered data is secure and reliable. This focus on data security aligns with broader enterprise objectives related to risk management and operational excellence. Ultimately, a comprehensive data recovery strategy enhances the overall security posture of the enterprise while supporting its goals of resilience, compliance and trust.
Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming enterprise cybersecurity software by automating complex processes and enhancing decision-making. By leveraging GenAI, enterprises can streamline threat detection, optimize resource allocation and proactively identify vulnerabilities, leading to improved operational performance. Additionally, GenAI enables teams to extract valuable insights from extensive data, fostering informed strategic planning and collaboration. As enterprises navigate digital transformation, integrating cybersecurity software with GenAI capabilities becomes crucial for maintaining a competitive edge and enhancing organizational resilience.
GenAI can enhance productivity and efficiency using data backup and recovery software by automating backup processes, improving data loss prevention strategies and optimizing recovery operations. AI algorithms can predict potential hardware failures and automate the scheduling of backups, ensuring that critical data is consistently protected. By analyzing patterns of data access and usage, GenAI can identify sensitive data that requires additional protection and streamline the recovery process by prioritizing critical assets. In the event of data loss, AI can accelerate recovery actions by generating recommendations for restoration steps based on the specific circumstances of the incident. Additionally, GenAI can help in creating and optimizing disaster recovery plans by simulating various scenarios, thereby empowering security personnel to act swiftly and effectively, minimizing downtime and enhancing data resilience.
Looking towards the future, the incorporation of agentic AI functionalities into data backup and recovery software has the potential to transform data management practices. In this envisioned future, agentic AI could autonomously evaluate the overall health of IT infrastructure, detecting anomalies and potential risks before they lead to data loss. It could actively manage backup schedules based on real-time analysis of data usage and system performance, optimizing the backup process without waiting for manual intervention. Moreover, in the event of a disaster, agentic AI might independently execute recovery processes, making decisions on data restoration priorities and performing the necessary actions to mitigate downtime. This evolution would not only streamline and enhance the resilience of data management practices but also empower enterprises to safeguard their critical information.
CIOs and security leaders should approach cybersecurity software incorporating GenAI, large language models (LLMs) and future agentic AI capabilities with enthusiasm and caution. While these technologies offer significant benefits, they also come with unique challenges and prerequisites. A holistic evaluation must include technical aspects and business, ethical and strategic considerations. Other areas of focus include risk awareness, critical infrastructure, organizational readiness, governance and compliance, and a long-term perspective on the sustainability and scalability of AI approaches.
Our Cybersecurity Buyers Guide research is designed to provide a comprehensive view of a software provider’s capability to enhance the effectiveness, performance and governance of cybersecurity measures within an enterprise. Separate Buyers Guide research reports are available for SIEM, IAM and EDR software.
ISG believes a methodical approach is essential to maximize competitiveness. It is critical to select the right software provider and product to improve the performance of your enterprise’s people, process, information and technology components.
The insights gained from understanding current cybersecurity software providers are invaluable for enterprise CIOs, CISOs and VPs of InfoSec who aim to align their technology investments with organizational goals, enhance security workflows and cultivate a culture of resilience. By investing in the right cybersecurity tools, these leaders can unlock new avenues for protection and transformation, positioning their enterprises to thrive.
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Data Recovery evaluates products based on a variety of capabilities, including backup management, compliance and data integrity, continuous data protection, data segmentation, GenAI and machine learning (ML), recovery speed and the opportunity to evolve into a managed service at a later time. To be included in this Buyers Guide, software providers must meet or exceed the inclusion criteria and have commercially available products.
This research evaluates the following software providers that offer products addressing key elements of data backup and recovery: Acronis, Arcserve, AvePoint, AWS, Cohesity, Commvault, Dell, Druva, HPE, IBM, Microsoft, N-able, NinjaOne, OpenText, Quest, Rubrik and Veeam.
This research-based index evaluates the full business and information technology value of data recovery software offerings. We encourage you to learn more about our Buyers Guide and its effectiveness as a provider selection and RFI/RFP tool.
We urge organizations to do a thorough job of evaluating data recovery offerings in this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these software providers and as an evaluation methodology. The Buyers Guide can be used to evaluate existing suppliers, plus provides evaluation criteria for new projects. Using it can shorten the cycle time for an RFP and the definition of an RFI.
The Buyers Guide for Data Recovery in 2025 finds AWS first on the list, followed by Microsoft and IBM.
Software providers that rated in the top three of any category ﹘ including the product and customer experience dimensions ﹘ earn the designation of Leader.
The Leaders in Product Experience are:
- AWS.
- AvePoint.
- Commvault.
The Leaders in Customer Experience are:
- IBM.
- Cohesity.
- Microsoft.
The Leaders across any of the seven categories are:
- IBM and Microsoft, which has achieved this rating in six of the seven categories.
- AWS in four categories.
- Cohesity in two categories.
- Commvault and Druva in one category.
The overall performance chart provides a visual representation of how providers rate across product and customer experience. Software providers with products scoring higher in a weighted rating of the five product experience categories place farther to the right. The combination of ratings for the two customer experience categories determines their placement on the vertical axis. As a result, providers that place closer to the upper-right are “exemplary” and rated higher than those closer to the lower-left and identified as providers of “merit.” Software providers that excelled at customer experience over product experience have an “assurance” rating, and those excelling instead in product experience have an “innovative” rating.
Note that close provider scores should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well-suited for use by every enterprise or process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how organizations handle data recovery, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences that can make one provider’s offering a better fit than another.
ISG Research has made every effort to encompass in this Buyers Guide the overall product and customer experience from our data recovery blueprint, which we believe reflects what a well-crafted RFP should contain. Even so, there may be additional areas that affect which software provider and products best fit an enterprise’s particular requirements. Therefore, while this research is complete as it stands, utilizing it in your own organizational context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of support for your projects.
You can find more details on our community as well as on our expertise in the research for this Buyers Guide.
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