Key takeaways
- Data volume and complexity will rise significantly, creating new exposure points that legacy approaches cannot manage because they were not designed to recover dynamic, distributed systems or AI-generated content.
- Many MSPs still rely on undocumented recovery steps or outdated assumptions that identity structures “rarely change.” In reality, misconfigurations and identity drift are risks, but the session emphasized that broader configuration and workflow dependencies now play an equally significant role.
- Compliance expectations will intensify, and audits will require deeper visibility and provable recovery readiness, including evidence that configurations, permissions, and operational context can be restored reliably.
- By 2030, organizations will require proof that they can perform full operational recovery within hours, not days, including identity structures, permissions, task flows, and historical states, as well as configuration integrity and automated validation.
- MSPs that modernize their data protection strategy now will strengthen client trust, margins, and service quality and reduce operational risk as environments continue to expand globally and across cloud systems.
With cybercrime projected to reach $11.9 trillion in global annual damage by 2030, according to Cybersecurity Ventures, managed service providers (MSPs) and IT departments are faced with growing pressure to protect data spread across SaaS applications, mobile devices, cloud platforms, and AI-assisted workflows. This escalation signals a future where data protection cannot remain tied to traditional retention strategies or fragmented tools.
During a session I facilitated at IT Nation Connect™ Global 2025 titled “Data Protection 2030 and Beyond: Preparing for the Next Era of Resilience,” this challenge came up repeatedly in conversations with MSP leaders. Many admitted they had never tested a full identity restore. That gap becomes riskier as cloud systems, AI-assisted workflows, and distributed data create dependencies that cannot be recovered manually. As threats grow more automated and destructive, MSPs and IT departments need to adopt data protection strategies built for the next decade.
What’s reshaping the data protection landscape heading into 2030
Below are the key factors reshaping what effective data protection will require in the years ahead:
Distributed data everywhere
In the session, I walked through how data now spans chat threads, shared workspaces, mobile interactions, vendor integrations, and temporary AI-generated content that rarely gets cataloged. It flows constantly across cloud applications, collaborative tools, mobile endpoints, and AI-assisted workflows. This expansion increases the number of locations where data can be created, modified, or lost and requires recovery workflows that understand the relationships between these systems.
Related content: Managing data sprawl
Identity and system configuration as evolving risk surface
Identity stores now determine user access, automation rules, system relationships, and delegated permissions. As reliance on identity increases, these objects have become high-value targets. Compromised identity structures can disrupt operations faster than traditional data loss incidents.
AI as both a threat and a defense
Generative AI (genAI) is dramatically increasing the speed, sophistication, and scale of cyberattacks, from automated phishing to adaptive exploitation and ransomware designed to target identity structures and configuration state. At the same time, AI-enabled defense tools are giving MSPs new advantages, strengthening proactive risk mitigation through anomaly detection, automated triage, predictive analytics, and guided remediation. The next era of resilience will require using AI to counteract AI-driven threats.
Ransomware becoming more destructive
Ransomware incidents continue to expand in scope, targeting communication data, configuration structures, and operational workflows. Damage extends well beyond encrypted files and requires recovery that reinstates configuration state, workflow relationships, and identity dependencies.
Accidental loss and misconfiguration remain persistent
As systems become more interconnected, a small configuration mistake or unintentional deletion can disrupt entire business processes. The session showed how these day-to-day errors remain a consistent driver of data loss and continue to highlight the need for automated validation and context-aware recovery.
Expanding compliance and audit expectations
Regulators across industries and regions are increasing scrutiny around retention, access governance, and recovery capabilities. One of the most discussed points during the session was how audit teams are already expanding their expectations for retention proof, access governance, and recovery results.
Why traditional approaches are no longer enough
Retention does not equal recovery
Retention tools were never designed to rebuild a functioning environment. They do not track identity relationships, dependency chains, or workflow states, which means a restore may bring back data but not usability. The session highlighted the critical difference between storing data and restoring a functional environment.
Fragmented tools increase exposure
Using multiple disconnected solutions for backup, retention, and restoration complicates unified anomaly detection, slows remediation, and limits the ability to guide recovery automatically. This fragmentation introduces challenges for MSPs that must manage dozens or hundreds of tenants.
Slow restoration breaks business continuity
Downtime costs continue to rise, and recovery expectations are tightening. Traditional restore workflows cannot support the operational speeds required to maintain user productivity and client trust.
What data protection must become by 2030
Identity-aware restoration
Future-ready data protection must include the ability to restore identity objects, privileges, and relationships. These elements determine how users authenticate, access resources, and perform tasks. Without identity restoration, full operational continuity is impossible. However, identity recovery must now be paired with configuration and workflow restoration to support modern application behavior.
AI will guide restoration paths, continuously validate integrity, and automate recovery steps that previously required advanced technician troubleshooting.
Context preserving recovery
Organizations must recover more than a simple dataset. They need a recovery process that preserves relationships, permissions, structures, and workflow integrity across complex distributed solutions. The session emphasized this repeatedly and noted that future systems will rely on automated guidance to streamline these steps.
Cloud resilient architectures
Scalable, elastic, multi-tenant designs will be essential. Protection systems must adapt to dynamic environments and workloads without manual reconfiguration and with unified visibility across distributed systems.
Immutable protection and verifiable integrity
Immutable storage and integrity validation ensure that recovery points cannot be altered. The session underscored the need for trustworthy restore points during incident response, along with automated disaster recovery (DR) testing and intelligent validation.
Compliance-centered protection models
Future protection must support long-term retention, audit readiness, and policy verification. MSPs will need evidence-based recovery capabilities that align with evolving regulations and allow auditors to verify not just data integrity but operational recoverability.
What MSPs need to do today
DR Testing
Automated DR testing is now essential. Most organizations still rely on manual or incomplete tests, which the session highlighted as a major operational risk.
Standardize offerings around resilience
MSPs benefit from consistent service tiers that deliver predictable outcomes. The session encouraged providers to replace ad hoc practices with standardized delivery, including standardized testing, verification, and restore workflows.
Strengthen identity governance and recovery readiness
MSPs must expand identity recovery to include configuration state, application relationships, and workflow context to support usable recovery.
Adopt unified, cloud-aligned protection strategies
Consolidated recovery workflows eliminate the inconsistencies that occur when MSPs manage separate tools, policies, and schedules. A consolidated approach makes recovery faster, minimizes misalignment, and supports predictable service delivery, especially as AI-assisted workflows become more common.
Use lifecycle moments for client education
Annual reviews and renewal cycles provide natural opportunities to introduce clients to resilience planning and future risk considerations, including discussions about DR testing, recovery validation, and context-aware protection.
How ConnectWise supports data protection through 2030
Unified protection for distributed environments
ConnectWise delivers protection designed for modern, distributed environments. This aligns with session themes around growing data diversity and increased operational interdependence, and the need for unified restore workflows that reduce manual troubleshooting.
Rapid, granular restoration for modern workloads
Because identity and configuration drift now drive many outages, ConnectWise provides granular restore points and metadata-driven search that shorten triage time and improve recovery accuracy.
Identity-centric recovery support
ConnectWise supports recovery across identities, configurations, and workflow context, enabling MSPs to restore usable environments with less manual effort.
Compliance-aligned protection for evolving requirements
ConnectWise provides protection capabilities that help MSPs support retention, reporting, and audit preparation across industries, including evidence of recoverability and immutable restore points that align with emerging compliance expectations.
The road to 2030
Data creation will accelerate, and compliance expectations will rise. MSPs that adopt unified protection, automated validation, AI-assisted recovery, and context-aware restoration will deliver resilient operations to meet the demands of 2030 and beyond.
Now is the right time to modernize your approach and prepare for what comes next.
