February 2025

When a calendar year has ended, I usually reflect on the many insightful conversations and engagements we have had with customers and partners. This year is no different, and one topic that has stood out – mentioned frequently, if not every time – is the growing importance of NIS2 backup solutions. Discussions often touched on the benefits of backup-as-a-service, particularly in ensuring a robust, NIS2-compliant backup strategy for organizations navigating today’s evolving regulatory landscape.

NIS2 it is …

The NIS2 Directive marks a pivotal shift in Europe’s approach to cybersecurity and operational resilience. By expanding its scope and introducing stricter obligations, the directive raises the stakes for C-suite executives and board members, placing them directly accountable for compliance, governance, and risk management. Against this regulatory backdrop, leveraging robust Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solutions like those offered by B4Restore becomes a strategic imperative to ensure data protection, operational continuity, and compliance.

Elevated Responsibilities for Leadership

Under NIS2, the C-suite and board of directors bear greater accountability for an organization’s ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats. The directive’s emphasis on stringent reporting, risk mitigation, and incident management underscores the importance of leadership in steering comprehensive cybersecurity strategies. In other words, compliance is no longer optional, and organizations face steep penalties for failure to meet these obligations.

This increased responsibility requires leaders to view data protection as an integral part of enterprise risk management. While traditional IT strategies focused narrowly on backups, BaaS solutions offer a change in thinking by integrating data protection into broader resilience frameworks.

With the combination of our BaaS and cloud-native service orchestration platform, organizations can align regulatory obligations with operational priorities, enhancing both security and efficiency.

Business Continuity and Critical Data Restoration

A significant part of compliance with NIS2 lies in ensuring that business continuity plans are not just theoretical but actionable during cyber incidents. Rapid recovery of critical data after a ransomware attack or other disruptions is essential for minimizing downtime, financial, and reputational damage.

B4Restore’s BaaS solution addresses this through a multi-layered approach:

• Air-gapped backups: Isolating backup data from live networks protects it from ransomware encryption, ensuring a secure last line of defense
• Separation-of-duties governance framework: Limits access to sensitive backup environments, reducing the risk of insider threats or unauthorized changes
• ISO certifications and compliance readiness: Certifications like ISO 27001 and ISO 22301 guarantee adherence to rigorous security standards, supporting the organization’s legal and regulatory requirements
• Fast, scalable recovery capabilities: Whether restoring terabytes of data or enabling mission-critical applications, the solution ensures downtime is minimized.

By focusing on data restoration readiness, organizations can meet both regulatory and operational demands, achieving compliance while maintaining customer trust and operational efficiency.

Strategic Convergence: Data Protection Meets Business Continuity

The evolving cybersecurity landscape calls for a convergence of data protection and backup strategies. NIS2 amplifies this need, urging organizations to adopt solutions that combine robust data safeguarding with the ability to quickly resume operations after an incident.

B4Restore’s Backup-as-a-Service exemplifies this convergence, delivering integrated, scalable, and compliant data protection for enterprises and MSPs navigating complex regulatory environments.

Recommendations for Leadership

We normally come away from these conversations with copious amounts of notes and thoughts. However, before we can close these meetings, we are always asked for our recommendations. So as far as we are concerned, to align with NIS2 and ensure resilience, we believe organizations should:

1. Implement integrated backup and security strategies: Treat backup services as a cornerstone of enterprise cybersecurity and operational resilience
2. Enhance governance frameworks: Adopt solutions with built-in separation-of-duties protocols and compliance certifications
3. Focus on recovery readiness: Ensure that backup solutions enable swift restoration of critical data and processes after cyber incidents
4. Prioritize cybersecurity at the leadership level: Boards and executives should foster a culture that recognizes data protection as central to business continuity and compliance.

By embracing the regulatory demands of NIS2 and leveraging advanced BaaS solutions, organizations can transform compliance into a competitive advantage. The intersection of governance, security, and operational resilience provides the foundation for navigating today’s increasingly complex threat landscape.

Do the right thing…

No. 1 Protect Your Business Confidently

• B4Restore has been protecting customers’ critical data for more than 20 years.

No.2 Leverage a High-Performance Data Protection Service

• B4Restore’s Backup-as-a-Service executes more than 70,000,000 backup jobs annually.

No. 3 Identify and Hire a Certified Managed Services Provider

• B4Restore’s information security standard is ISO 27001 certified.
• B4Restore’s Business Continuity Management approach is ISO 22301 certified.
• B4Restore has the independent service auditor’s ISAE 3000/3402 assurance report.