An Omdia study with Object First (reported 2026-09-08; thin news day so we're filing it on the weekend catch-up) finds 83% of organizations hit by successful ransomware in the past two years (up from 66% in 2024), while only 39% recovered at least three-quarters of their data (down from 57%). 93% say Absolute Immutability is critical; only 16% say their backup storage meets it.
Same week, ITAD commentary urged providers to niche into AI/high-density data-center decommissioning — colo ownership splits, liquid cooling, accelerators, boot media, caches, and model weights — with NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 as the documented sanitization bar before assets leave custody. That's an Anchor Point problem as much as a backup problem: when media retires, the recovery story and the destruction certificate have to both be true.
If your "immutable" backup still has a delete path an admin can click after a helpdesk call, it isn't immutable. Test a restore this month, name who can break the lock, and decide what happens to retired disks before the next refresh cycle.