Australian healthcare organisations are increasing spending on cyber resilience and data protection, but many IT professionals remain unsure they could keep critical data operational after a cyberattack, according to the 2026 Wasabi Global Cloud Storage Index.
The research found about two-thirds (70%) of healthcare organisations have adopted technologies to protect critical data, including the use of immutability to prevent alteration or deletion. However, only 51% of healthcare IT professionals said they were confident they could keep data operational and unaltered following a cyberattack.
The gap between investment and confidence matters in healthcare, where loss of system availability or compromised data can disrupt patient care, delay treatments and increase the risk of harm.
Beyond cyber resilience, the report points to increased investment in AI and the supporting infrastructure. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of healthcare IT professionals surveyed said they expect their organisation’s AI infrastructure budget to rise over the next year, with 67% of AI spending allocated to data and compute infrastructure.
Cost pressures were also highlighted. In the survey, 43% of healthcare respondents cited high or unpredictable costs as a top challenge in managing AI-related cloud storage, while 27% said their AI projects were operating at a loss.
The study also reported that fees can account for a significant share of cloud storage spend. Nearly half (49%) of healthcare organisations’ cloud storage spending was reported as going toward storage and networking fees rather than storage capacity.
These cost and fee dynamics appear to be influencing architecture choices. Wasabi reported 73% of healthcare respondents use more than one public cloud storage provider, and 65% are pursuing hybrid storage deployments.
The research also found healthcare organisations estimate up to 49% of stored capacity consists of unanalysed or underutilised “dark data”, suggesting both cost and governance implications as data volumes rise.
“Healthcare organisations increasingly recognise the true cost of cloud storage extends beyond the baseline storage capacity utilised,” said Andrew Smith, director of strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi Technologies and a former IDC analyst. “As AI, analytics, and other data-intensive workloads drive more frequent needs for data to be accessed, the fees associated with moving and using that data become increasingly difficult to predict and manage.”
Methodology: Wasabi commissioned independent market research agency Vanson Bourne to survey 1,700 business and IT respondents globally, including 171 respondents within the healthcare sector. The research was conducted in November and December 2025 among organisations with more than 100 employees.
You can read the full report here.
