Democratised access to information, the onslaught of ransomware and ongoing attacks on backup repositories in emerging markets have contributed to Veeam’s decision to make V13 – the latest version of its backup and replication platform – available to the EMEA region in Q4 2025.
V13, designed to provide a hybrid cloud backup solution for any organisation, was first announced at VeeamON Tour in San Diego in April 2025.
Plans are in place to make the technology more widely available, the company stated during the SA leg of the tour, hosted yesterday in Midrand, Gauteng. The company used the event to highlight why it considers V13 to be a formidable asset to defence systems.
Dave Russell, snr VP, head of global strategy at Veeam, said the technology offers wide-ranging native support, centralised management, cloud mobility to prevent lock-in and adaptable modular flexibility. This is all detailed in a guide the software company says is designed to empower users to retain control of their data across various clouds.
According to the company, this version offers up to 100% improved workload processing speed, up to 50% improved backup performance, and enables 10 times faster and cheaper restores to cloud.
It added that the technology helps create true zero trust operations as appliance OS root privileges are not available to backup server admins (or any other users and roles), and any sensitive host operations and configuration changes must be approved by the dedicated security officer role.
Russell said the company’s research into the broader threat landscape in 2025 – Veeam insights ‘From Risk to Resilience – Ransomware Trends and Proactive Strategies’ – confirmed the impact of ransomware on organisations. He said it can take 24 hours for threat actors to gain access, exfiltrate data and deliver ransom demands.
Russell added that 69% of companies surveyed claimed to have been attacked by ransomware over the past year. Moreover, 40% of those attacked pay the ransom, said Russell, adding that 27% of those that paid the ransom did not receive the decryption key.
“Of those organisations that did pay the ransom, 69% were attacked again – often by the same group,” said Russell.
Demand for enhanced data resilience
The situation has brought data resilience and backup strategies firmly into focus for business leaders.
Based on its analysis, Veeam believes organisations must devote more resources to increase resilience, fortify incident response and support recovery.
According to the company, 52% of companies reported major improvements or overhauls in IT operations and security team communication, 20% of companies' confidence dropped in their ransomware preparedness post-attack, and 30% of companies have a predefined chain of command for their incident response.
Russell added that through engagement with its global partner ecosystem and 550 000 customers, it seems many business leaders have an inaccurate perception of their organisation’s level of cyber resilience.
“Research shows that 70% of companies believe they are resilient, but in reality, only 8% of organisations have recorded best-in-class data resiliency,” said Russell.
Veeam added that 89% of attacks targeted backup repositories and 34% of backup repositories were modified or deleted.
The research shows that companies must shift from reactive security to proactive cyber resilience strategies to meet the challenge of ransomware, leveraging preparedness, rapid response and secure recovery measures to reduce risk.
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