The need of information backup has been clear for the reason that early days of computing. And the oldest backup methodology — tape — remains to be a viable possibility.
Prior to now decade, tape use declined in favor of the cloud on account of its comparable prices, straightforward scalability and faster information retrieval. Nonetheless, information safety groups are revisiting tape-based backup as cyberattacks goal on-line vulnerabilities and methods evolve from the 3-2-1 backup rule to the 3-2-1-1-0 rule, which provides an offline, verified restore level — a function regulators and cyber-insurance suppliers are pressuring enterprises to undertake.
Tape-based backup makes a comeback
Even probably the most subtle {hardware} and software program will fail. Over time, many different backup strategies emerged however most organizations lengthy relied on tape for economical, high-capacity retention, stated Kevin Ripa, a senior teacher on the SANS Institute, a cybersecurity coaching, certification and analysis group.
“It was the spine of how organizations recorded and saved information at scale,” added Chasserae Coyne, a member of the Rising Developments Working Group on the skilled governance affiliation ISACA and supervisor of AI, information and privateness danger at an insurance coverage and fintech agency.
Low-cost disk and public cloud shifted enterprise backup architectures away from tape. Organizations checked out cloud providers not only for day-to-day computing and information processing, but additionally for backup storage, stated Harshad Sadashiv Kadam, a member of ISACA’s Rising Developments Working Group and a senior infrastructure safety engineer at a know-how firm.
Using tape by no means disappeared and has skilled a current resurgence. Though the market measurement for tape storage varies by analysis agency, the consensus is it is rising. The Enterprise Analysis Firm, for instance, valued the storage market measurement at $6.27 billion in 2025 and predicted that it’ll develop to $11.18 billion in 2030 at a compound annual development price of 12.3%.
Why tape is again within the enterprise combine
Two main components drive the upswing in tape storage for backup.
1. The boundaries of always-on storage
Threat leaders acknowledge on-line storage — whether or not accessed by the cloud or on-premises — has drawbacks, Coyne stated. Cyberattacks can corrupt enterprise techniques, together with the info in these storage techniques.
“Some thought that cloud storage for his or her backups was a good suggestion, till their cloud storage will get compromised in a ransomware assault,” Ripa added.
Ripa stated general cloud prices are sending some organizations again to tape for particular backup and archive wants.
2. Regulators and insurers increase the bar for backups
Coyne pointed to laws and requirements associated to information safety that emphasize immutable information and separate backups, options which can be enabled by offline retention, which is driving renewed curiosity in tape. Equally, cyber insurance coverage carriers more and more require proof of offline or immutable backups and will supply extra favorable phrases with these controls in place.
How tape storage stacks up towards SSDs and HDDs
Tape matches neatly into broader information safety and danger frameworks, in addition to organizational resilience methods, as a result of it may be saved offline. Air-gapped safety is important for organizations as a result of it is disconnected from the community and web, making it inaccessible to hackers, ransomware and different cyberattacks. When mixed with WORM media and managed processes, tape helps immutability and long-term retention for compliance and archival governance.
Philipp Jung, a senior companion within the digital and analytics observe at consulting agency Kearney, listed tape’s benefits versus SSDs and HDDs:
- Increased reliability in chilly storage eventualities, with no wear-out or mechanical danger failure.
- Increased sturdiness with a shelf lifetime of 20 to 30-plus years versus disk’s three to 10 years.
- Extra scalability with petabytes and past, whereas HDDs have rack, energy and cooling restraints, and SSDs get costly with scale.
- No energy consumption when at relaxation.
- Increased safety offline when media are taken off the community, whereas HDD and SSD are accessible on-line.
- Decrease prices per terabyte.
Tape ought to complement, not substitute, different backup strategies. Many backup methods, particularly the 3-2-1-1-0 strategy, name for information storage on not less than two several types of media, with one stored offline for air-gapped safety. Tape can be superb for long-term archiving.
“Tape is sweet for archives, compliance and back-ups which can be accessed in [an] emergency and the place you might have time to revive,” Jung stated.
Mary Ok. Pratt is an award-winning freelance journalist with a give attention to overlaying enterprise IT and cybersecurity administration.
