Backups still matter, but they’re no longer the whole recovery story. When attackers target credentials, backup tooling, networks, and recovery paths, the real question is whether your team can prove recovery under pressure.
In this issue, we cover modern DR for compromised backup environments, a planned recovery test at scale, our new Vancouver data center with Cohesity FortKnox Cleanroom, and Stephen Pyott’s panel appearance at Cohesity’s GSI and MSP Executive Forum.
– Nudrat Majid, Customer Success Manager
Can You Recover When Attackers Have Your Backups Too?
Modern ransomware is no longer just about encrypting production systems. Attackers are now targeting backups, recovery infrastructure, and DR environments to eliminate recovery paths entirely.
Global damages from ransomware are forecast to reach $74 billion in 2026 (with average incident costs of around $5 million driven by downtime, remediation, and business loss). At the same time, attacks have become more aggressive and multi-layered, with ransomware groups actively attempting to compromise backup environments, credentials, and recovery workflows.
Despite this, 90% of organisations report high confidence in their ability to recover. The reality is often more complex.
A backup copy still matters.
But it doesn’t answer the harder questions:
- Can you prove your data is clean?
- Can you restore in a secure, isolated environment?
- Can you keep operations running during recovery?
- Can you fail back without reintroducing risk?
In 2026, recovery planning has to assume attackers will target everything – not just your data, but the systems designed to restore it.
Resilience now depends on more than backups.
It depends on verified, isolated, and fully tested recovery.
Recovery Corner: What It Takes to Test Recovery at Scale
Stage2Data is preparing a large-scale DR test for a multi-site customer with hundreds of VMs, multiple data centers, VDI dependencies, and 15 to 20 network segments that need to communicate across the recovery environment. The planned test will validate not only whether workloads can power on, but also whether they can retain the right network identity and communicate through the required paths.
The first phase will focus on a small group of lower-risk VMs before moving into broader testing. That phased approach matters because large recoveries rarely fail on compute alone. They fail when segmented networks, VDI access, application dependencies, and user connectivity do not come back in the right order.
New Vancouver Data Center Operational with Cohesity FortKnox Cleanroom
Stage2Data’s new Vancouver data center is now operational, adding another recovery location for customers who need clean, isolated recovery options in Canada.
The site can support Cohesity FortKnox Cleanroom, giving customers a controlled environment to validate restores before systems return to production. It’s built for scenarios where the primary environment, network, or backup access path cannot be trusted.
For Cohesity customers, this adds a practical recovery path without a separate recovery charge when they need to recover. The goal is simple: give teams a clean place to prove recovery, not just store backups.
Success Story: From Backup Coverage to Fast Failover
A multi-office organization needed more than backup copies. It needed fast recovery for critical headquarters systems, reliable protection for satellite offices, Microsoft 365 backup, and a failover path that would not require emergency network changes during an incident.
Stage2Data helped the client build a geo-redundant 3-2-1 protection model using Cohesity, Cohesity with Hybrid Extender technology, dedicated DR clusters, and Stage2Data’s S3-compatible object storage. Critical workloads are protected locally for fast restores, while satellite office backups are sent to a centralized Cohesity cluster in Stage2Data’s data center.
The result is simpler protection across locations, lower infrastructure overhead at remote sites, more cost-efficient long-term retention, and a DR model built for failover within minutes when production is disrupted.
Resilience Everywhere at Cohesity’s GSI and MSP Forum
Stephen Pyott joined a partner panel at the Cohesity Global GSI and MSP Executive Forum from April 13 to 15 in Ho Chi Minh City.
The forum brought together Global System Integrator and Managed Service Provider partners for three days of executive sessions, roadmap discussions, and regional partner alignment. The main theme was ‘resilience everywhere’, with a focus on how partners can use Cohesity Data Cloud to help customers secure, manage, and recover data during ransomware and other disruption events.
For Stage2Data, the discussion reinforced a practical point: resilience depends on more than backup. Customers need clean recovery options, partner-led expertise, and recovery paths that can hold up when the primary environment is under pressure.
