Veeam's Data Resilience Maturity Model: A Research-Based Framework for Enterprise Recovery Readiness

Understanding the Recovery Readiness Gap

Business continuity remains a major focus for organisations, but many discover their true recovery readiness only during an actual disruption, whether ransomware, accidental data deletion, or system outage. This disconnect between preparation and performance has prompted Veeam Software to develop what stands as the industry's first comprehensive Data Resilience Maturity Model (DRMM).

The research reveals a striking finding: 74% of participating enterprises fell into the lowest two maturity horizons, indicating they lack the maturity needed to recover quickly and confidently from disruptions. This statistic alone underscores why organisations need a structured approach to assess and advance their data resilience capabilities.

A Collaborative Development Process

Veeam developed the DRMM in collaboration with McKinsey and industry experts from MIT, Palo Alto Networks, and Microsoft, informed by input from 500 senior IT, security, and operations leaders, along with insights from 50 one-on-one interviews with industry experts. This extensive research foundation distinguishes the DRMM from vendor-centric checklists or narrow frameworks that address only isolated capabilities.

George Westerman, Principal Research Scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management, articulates the core insight driving the model's development: "Outages aren't just technical failures. They're signals of deeper issues in how technology is managed and integrated across the business." This perspective informed the DRMM's structure, which examines resilience across strategy, people, processes, and technology.

Four Maturity Horizons Define the Path Forward

The DRMM defines four maturity horizons, each representing a step forward in how well an organisation can prepare for, withstand, and recover from disruption. The higher the maturity horizon, the more integrated and effective the practices become. Organisations progress through these horizons by strengthening specific capabilities across eight dimensions: strategy, people, processes, backup, recovery, architecture and portability, security, reporting, and intelligence.

Organisations with more mature resilience practices demonstrated measurable advantages, including faster recovery times, reduced data loss, and greater operational continuity during disruption. The model provides concrete examples of these outcomes. A global bank cut outage costs by $300,000 (approximately £230,000) per incident by automating recovery and reducing mean time to recovery (MTTR). A large healthcare provider achieved $5 million (approximately £3.8 million) in savings per outage by implementing quarterly recovery exercises and reducing outage durations from hours to minutes.

One healthcare network reduced outage costs by $5 million (approximately £3.8 million) per incident. A global bank eliminated cyber-related outages entirely after implementing a more integrated recovery strategy. These results demonstrate that maturity advancement produces tangible business value.

Addressing Critical Execution Gaps

Data resilience ranks as the number two strategic priority for enterprises over the next two years—second only to cost reduction. When it comes to what matters most regarding resilience, data security tops the list, followed by backup and recovery. Despite this clear prioritisation, execution remains inconsistent across organisations.

The research identified several significant readiness gaps:

• Only 50% of organisations 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.

These gaps reflect a common pattern: organisations have made progress on backup and recovery, but far fewer have built a complete, consistent approach connecting strategy, intelligence, and team coordination across the business. The DRMM addresses this by providing a structure that ties technical execution to business outcomes.

Five Practical Applications of the Model

The DRMM provides five clear starting points for building stronger resilience:

1. Clarify ownership and strategy by defining roles, assigning accountability, and aligning efforts across IT, security, and risk teams.
2. Test plans, not just tools, through frequent testing, especially after new deployments, so teams know what to expect and how to respond under pressure.
3. Reduce manual steps where possible by automating tasks like backup verification, failover, and alerting to improve speed and consistency.
4. Track impact, not just activity, by defining meaningful metrics tied to business goals and tracking improvement over time.
5. Make resilience a core responsibility by naming 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.

Industry-Specific Benchmarking Reveals Variation

The DRMM provides a consistent structure while allowing organisations to benchmark against peers in their industry. Baseline data from initial DRMM research shows significant differences across industries. Sectors like Financial Services, Insurance, and Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) often score higher due to regulatory pressure and stronger investment. Others, such as Public Sector and Consumer, show consistent gaps in key areas like automation, recovery testing, and cross-functional planning.

This industry-specific benchmarking enables direct comparison with peers facing similar regulatory requirements, operational constraints, and threat profiles. The variation also highlights that resilience maturity develops differently based on sector-specific pressures and investment patterns.

Vendor Neutrality Supports Broad Applicability

The DRMM is designed to help organisations advance regardless of the tools they use. It connects assessment with action to drive meaningful change. This neutrality makes it especially valuable for large enterprises working across hybrid environments, legacy systems, and multi-vendor stacks.

The model was shaped by input from a wide mix of industries and roles. It captures the realities facing CIOs, CISOs, IT operations, and compliance leaders, each with their own priorities and challenges. By accounting for diverse perspectives and operational realities, the DRMM functions as a shared language for discussing resilience across organisational boundaries.

Quantifiable Return on Investment

Organisations applying principles reflected in the DRMM have seen significant gains. On average, every dollar invested in resilience returns between $3 and $10 (approximately £2.3 and £7.6) in value through reduced downtime, faster recovery, and greater operational agility. This ROI calculation provides financial justification for resilience investments that might otherwise struggle to secure executive approval.

At VeeamON, SiliconANGLE captured a telling anecdote: "One CISO shared that she had pushed for budget to improve ransomware readiness but was repeatedly denied until her organisation was hit. She said if she had access to a model like the DRMM earlier, she could have more effectively quantified the risk and secured support before the damage was done."

Moving from Assessment to Action

Organisations rarely operate at the same level of maturity across every area of data resilience. Some may have strong backup capabilities but lack automation in recovery or visibility in reporting. By assessing maturity across eight dimensions, the DRMM establishes a clear baseline and identifies the highest-impact next steps.

The goal is not to achieve perfection in every category but to prioritise the areas that offer the biggest risk reduction or operational gain. It also considers varying levels of complexity, budget, and resource constraints, guiding teams toward the most practical next steps. This pragmatic approach recognises that organisations must balance ideal resilience postures against real-world limitations.

Conclusion

The DRMM helps organisations bring clarity to resilience, turning risk into action and strategy into outcomes. As data volumes grow and environments stretch across cloud, on-premises, and edge infrastructure, the model provides a structured method for understanding current capabilities, identifying priorities, and measuring progress.

The combination of research-backed insights, industry benchmarking, and practical guidance makes the DRMM a valuable tool for organisations seeking to close the gap between perceived and actual recovery readiness. For IT and security leaders responsible for business outcomes, the model offers a clear path to building resilience as a strategic capability rather than merely a technical task.