Who handles backup, disaster recovery and ransomware response?
Backup, Disaster Recovery and Ransomware: What The Shortlist Report Finds
10 firms lead, appearing in 5.5–10.9% of 55 AI responses. The sample cannot separate them, so we do not pretend it can.
No clear leader
No single firm dominates this question. Ten come up regularly and they specialise in different things, so the firm worth calling is the one that fits your situation rather than whoever sits highest.
Microsoft Azure6 of 55
Vortex6 of 55
Provides business continuity planning design, implementation, and management including Business Impact Analysis.
Cohesity5 of 55
Provides data protection, backup, recovery and cyber resilience solutions to mid-market and enterprise organizations.
IBM5 of 55
Manages enterprise infrastructure, hybrid cloud operations, security, and IT modernization for large organizations with complex environments.
Sourcepass5 of 55
Provides managed IT services to mid-market and enterprise organizations with 500+ employees, offering 24/7 support and vCIO account management.
+5 more, tiedin the table
Based on 55 ChatGPT responses to this question, collected August 11, 2026–August 19, 2026. Firms are counted once per response. How we measure.
The ranking
| Firm | Responses | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 10 firms, 5.5–10.9% | |||
| Microsoft Azure | 6 of 55 | 10.9% | |
| VortexProvides business continuity planning design, implementation, and management including Business Impact Analysis. | 6 of 55 | 10.9% | |
| Cohesitycohesity.comProvides data protection, backup, recovery and cyber resilience solutions to mid-market and enterprise organizations. | 5 of 55 | 9.1% | |
| IBMManages enterprise infrastructure, hybrid cloud operations, security, and IT modernization for large organizations with complex environments. | 5 of 55 | 9.1% | |
| Sourcepasssourcepass.comProvides managed IT services to mid-market and enterprise organizations with 500+ employees, offering 24/7 support and vCIO account management. | 5 of 55 | 9.1% | |
| ZertoOffers continuous data protection and non-disruptive automated failover testing orchestration. | 5 of 55 | 9.1% | |
| CMIT Solutionscmitsolutions.comManaged IT, cybersecurity, backup, and consulting through a network of local offices for small/midsize businesses. | 3 of 55 | 5.5% | |
| DataBankdatabank.comProvides managed disaster recovery services including continuous testing, failover management and compliance reporting. | 3 of 55 | 5.5% | |
| Expedientexpedient.comDelivers managed cloud, infrastructure, and managed IT services to midmarket and enterprise customers. | 3 of 55 | 5.5% | |
| Google CloudCloud migration, modernization, and managed services for enterprise data and AI workloads. | 3 of 55 | 5.5% | |
Key findings
- No firm answers “Who handles backup, disaster recovery and ransomware response?” reliably in ChatGPT. The most-named, Microsoft Azure, appeared in 6 of 55 responses (10.9%) collected August 11, 2026–August 19, 2026, and 9 other firms scored close enough that the sample cannot put any of them in order.
- Microsoft Azure, Vortex and Cohesity were named most often, in 5–6 of 55 responses. All 10 firms in the leading group are listed with their counts in the table below.
- 10 firms cleared the reporting threshold on “Who handles backup, disaster recovery and ransomware response?” in ChatGPT as of August 19, 2026; the full table with response counts is below.
- IBM appears in 4 of the 15 managed IT service providers reports published by The Shortlist Report, the widest coverage of any firm named on this page.
- No firm paid to appear in this ranking; placement cannot be bought, and the counts come from ChatGPT responses rather than from submissions.
Why the tiers fall where they do
Tier 1 holds Microsoft Azure, Vortex, Cohesity, IBM, Sourcepass, Zerto, CMIT Solutions, DataBank, Expedient and Google Cloud, named in 3 to 6 of the 55 ChatGPT responses. They are grouped rather than ranked because the gaps between them are inside the margin of error at this sample size — one extra mention would reorder them, so an order would be reporting noise as a finding.
The test is McNemar’s at 95%, applied against the same 55 responses for every firm. The full reasoning, and what happened when we ranked one-to-N instead.
What the sample shows
10 firms lead this question: Microsoft Azure, Vortex, Cohesity, IBM, Sourcepass, Zerto, CMIT Solutions, DataBank, Expedient and Google Cloud. They appear in 5.5–10.9% of the 55 responses. The gaps between them are inside the margin of error at this sample size, so they are listed together rather than ranked against each other.
139 firms were named at least once across the sample. 10 of them cleared the threshold of 2 responses and appear above; the rest were named once and are inside the noise.
How to read this
Firms are grouped into tiers, not ranked one to fifteen. A tier holds every firm whose 95% confidence interval overlaps the leader's, which is a long way of saying the sample cannot tell them apart. Order within a tier is arbitrary — read the counts, not the position.
Share is the percentage of responses that named the firm — not a quality score. A firm scoring low here may be excellent and simply under-written about online, which is a finding about its visibility rather than its work.
The same question was asked repeatedly because AI assistants do not answer identically twice. A single response would tell you almost nothing.
What this measurement does not tell you
- It is not a quality ranking. Share reflects how much has been written about a firm online, which is what an AI assistant reads. A capable firm nobody writes about scores low here.
- It is a reading from a date range, not a permanent standing. This sample was collected August 11, 2026–August 19, 2026; models change and so do their answers.
- It covers ChatGPT only. Other assistants answer differently, and we do not extrapolate across engines we have not measured.
- Order within a tier is arbitrary. Read the counts, not the position. Why we use tiers.
Cite this report
The Shortlist Report. (2026). Backup, Disaster Recovery and Ransomware: What The Shortlist Report Finds. The Shortlist Report. https://www.shortlistreport.com/article/msp-backup-and-ransomware-recovery
Underlying counts: CSV · JSON. Every answer they were counted from: plain text · JSON. All reusable under CC BY 4.0 with attribution.