Air-gapped backups are recovery copies of data stored in a way that keeps them isolated from the main production network. The isolation may be physical, such as offline media, or logical, such as a highly restricted backup environment that is not continuously reachable from normal systems.
They matter because many attacks, especially ransomware and destructive intrusions, try to encrypt, delete, or corrupt backups before defenders can restore. If backup repositories are reachable from compromised accounts or shared identity infrastructure, an attacker may disable recovery along with production systems. Air-gapped backups reduce that risk by preserving a clean restore source. In defense, they are paired with testing, access control, and immutable retention so organizations can recover even when the primary network, credentials, or admin tools are unavailable.