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Ask most IT teams whether they're protected against a major outage or ransomware attack, and the answer will almost certainly be yes, because the backups are in place and the box marked 'disaster recovery plan' has been ticked. But there's a difference between having a backup and recovering from a disaster, and that gap tends to reveal itself at the worst possible moment. The backup problem nobody talks about Backups were built for a different era. When the biggest threat was hardware failure or accidental deletion, copying files to tape or a secondary disk made sense, because the workflow was simply to preserve the data, restore from the copy, and carry on. Modern threats operate differently. Ransomware operators do not just encrypt production systems; they target backup infrastructure first. By the time an attack becomes visible, malicious code may have lain dormant in the environment for weeks, so backup jobs from that window are already tainted. IBM's 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that 76 percent of organizations needed more than 100 days to recover from a cyberattack, including those that believed their backups were intact. For organizations with on-premises backup infrastructure, the arithmetic is brutal. Systems sit offline, staff cannot work, and customers feel the impact while IT teams scramble to find a clean recovery point that may or may not exist. The gap between RTO goals and reality Recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) are the core metrics of any disaster recovery plan. RTO defines how long systems can be offline before the business is materially harmed; RPO defines acceptable data loss. Both look reasonable on paper, yet practice tends to expose them as aspirational more often than IT teams care to admit. Legacy backup tools were designed to protect data, not to deliver fast recovery at scale. Restoring a full server takes hours or days, especially when the target hardware differs from what was lost. Testing rarely happens rigorously, which leaves edge cases unexplored, so when disaster strikes the recovery plan turns out to have been theoretical. Among businesses with 20 to 100 employees, 57 percent report downtime costs exceeding $100,000 per hour. For an SMB earning $10 million in annual revenue, a single day offline can cost $55,000 in direct losses. One in five SMBs would go out of business if the attack cost them as little as $10,000 in damages. The market is responding. The global Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) sector was valued at $18.89 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $83.15 billion by 2034, a trajectory that reflects how many organizations are moving beyond backup-only thinking. What DRaaS changes Disaster Recovery as a Service is a different proposition. Rather than copying data and hoping restoration goes smoothly, DRaaS maintains a live, continuously updated replica of the protected environment and provides the cloud infrastructure to run it within minutes of a failure. In a ransomware scenario, the architecture matters. Immutable, offsite cloud storage keeps backup data beyond the reach of an attacker who has compromised the local environment, while automated failover removes the dependency on a manual process that has rarely been rehearsed. Because the replica runs in the cloud, recovery time is counted in minutes rather than days. Cove Data Protection's DRaaS is built on this model. The architecture is cloud-native by design rather than an appliance-based product with a cloud layer retrofitted. Backup data lives in N-able's private cloud , physically separated from customer infrastructure, with immutability applied by default. Tested failover to the cloud comes as a core feature rather than a premium add-on. Cove is built for the modern era and requires minimal babysitting, with multi-tenant management, automated testing, and a single interface across the entire environment. That contrasts with enterprise platforms that demand heavy customization before they work. Testing as a feature, not an afterthought How DRaaS providers approach recovery testing is one of the sharpest differentiators in the market. Most backup products leave it as a manual exercise that IT teams plan but rarely complete, because spinning up a recovery environment is disruptive. Cove automates recovery verification, with tests that run against backed-up workloads and confirm restoration succeeded. Administrators see evidence that the systems they protect would come back online as expected. The benefit extends beyond compliance to the difference between a plan that works and one that merely exists. For businesses and MSPs that handle dozens or hundreds of clients or employees, tested and verified recoverability at scale has become central to the value proposition and a genuine differentiator in a market where backup is now a commodity. Cove Data Protection, part of the N-able portfolio, provides cloud-native backup and disaster recovery as a service for organizations. Learn more at n-able.com/products/cove-data-protection. Contributed by N-able.

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The 2027 Corvette Stingray tops out at 200 mph (322 km/h).

The updated entry-level sports car is priced from $73,495.

A new 6.7-liter V8 delivers 535 hp and 520 lb-ft of torque.

The C8 Corvette , often described as a budget supercar thanks to its mid-engined layout, performance, and looks, is now the cheapest way to reach 200 mph (322 km/h) in North America. The 2027 Corvette Stingray has been updated with a new engine and carries an MSRP of $73,495, which makes it a genuine performance bargain.

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General Motors picked National Corvette Day to drop the news. The headline is that the entry-level model’s top speed has climbed 6 mph (10 km/h) over its predecessor , cracking the 200 mph barrier.

More: Chevy Kills LS9 V8 After Nearly Two Decades, But ‘Something Big’ Is Coming Next

While GM has yet to announce the top speed of the 2027 Corvette Grand Sport and Grand Sport X , the Stingray is already faster than the track-focused Z06, trailing only the 233 mph (375 km/h) posted by the flagship ZR1.

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A New Heart

According to small block assistant chief engineer Mike Kociba, the secret behind the added velocity is “all power.” For the 2027 model year, the 6.2-liter LT2 has been swapped for an all-new 6.7-liter LS6 small-block V8, which is set to “create a unique place in the Corvette lineup.”

More: You’ll Have To Pay Extra For Center Exhausts On The 2027 Corvette Grand Sport

The naturally aspirated engine runs the highest compression ratio of any production Corvette at 13.0:1 and adds a new continuously variable oil pump. The result is 535 hp (399 kW / 542 PS) and 520 lb-ft (705 Nm) of torque, a jump of 45 hp and 55 lb-ft over its predecessor. Power reaches the rear wheels through an eight-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission.

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Beyond the higher top speed, the Stingray is quicker in a straight line too. The 0-60 mph (100 km/h) sprint has dropped to 2.8 seconds (-0.2″), with the car clearing the quarter mile in 11 seconds flat (-0.2″) at an exit speed of 124 mph (200 km/h).

As shown in an official video , the 200 mph (322 km/h) figure was verified using a standard narrow-body 1LT Coupe. That means anyone who opts for the Z51 Performance Package might not match it because of the extra downforce. Either way, the company warns buyers not to replicate the stunt, which a professional driver performed on a closed course.

More: A $255K Corvette Embarrassed A $4.3M Bugatti To 60 MPH

To put this bargain into perspective, the next cheapest route into the 200-mph club is the Cadillac CT5-V Blackwing. That sedan reaches 205 mph (330 km/h) but flirts with a $100,000 sticker price. Among German rivals, the Porsche 911 Turbo S will match the Corvette’s 200-mph capability but starts at an MSRP of $270,300.

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The milestone announcement on June 30th marks 73 years since the first production Corvette rolled off the assembly line in Flint, Michigan. The original C1, powered by an inline-six, topped out at 105 mph (169 km/h), while the small-block V8 version that arrived shortly after pushed that figure to 118-120 mph (190-193 km/h), showing how far the nameplate has come.

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Life on Earth could continue for another 1.8 billion years, according to new research. This figure, which is based on complex climate models, is far longer than many previous studies indicated.

As the sun evolves, it is getting brighter. Our star is currently producing about a third more energy than it did at the dawn of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. And it will continue to get hotter until it eventually dies in about 5 billion years .

Scientists have wondered for decades how long life on Earth will manage to cling to existence as the sun brightens. In 1982, James Lovelock and colleagues estimated that Earth's photosynthetic biosphere — which includes all plants and forms the basis for most of the planet’s biology — would end about 100 million years from now . Successive studies have pushed back the deadline for the death of all life on Earth .

In the new study, published May 28 in the journal JGR Atmospheres , researchers suggest that plant life could continue about 1.8 billion years into the future. That nears the time when Earth would lose its oceans to space, either through radiation splitting water atoms or runaway evaporation, in about 2 billion years.

"We were trying to show that life on Earth — complex vegetation — could survive longer into the future than previous studies had shown," study co-author Jacob Haqq-Misra , an astrobiologist at space exploration charity Blue Marble Space , told Live Science.

The boundaries of life

Life on Earth relies on photosynthesis , the process used by plants, algae and some bacteria to turn sunlight into energy. The mechanism chemically converts carbon dioxide and water into sugars and oxygen. It requires both CO 2 and sunlight.

But at certain temperatures, plants' photosynthetic machinery shuts down. Eventually, the sun will warm Earth to the point that plants are no longer able to photosynthesize, which would in turn cause entire food webs to collapse and all life to perish.

Another issue is that as the sun dies and it gets brighter, there will be less carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, effectively starving plants.

Plants turn sunlight into energy, but at certain temperatures this ability shuts down. (Image credit: lamyai via Getty Images) "The Earth has stayed pretty hospitable in terms of surface temperature for most of the last 4 billion years because it has a built-in thermostat" by storing CO 2 in rocks and releasing it during volcanic eruptions, Robert Graham , a planetary science researcher at the University of Chicago, who was not involved in the research, told Live science.

When it is hotter, the planet pulls more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and stores it in rocks underground, Graham said. This offsets the warming to keep the temperature stable but means that the carbon dioxide isn't accessible to plants.

Climate models and extreme plants

In the new study, Haqq-Misra and colleague Eric Wolf , a research scientist at Blue Marble Space, used 29 climate models to estimate what would happen to Earth's vegetative biosphere under different scenarios. They used the two extreme cases as limits — when Earth is too hot for life but the CO 2 was stable; and when there is not enough CO 2, but the temperature was stable. They then looked at the range of CO 2 and sunlight conditions in between those extremes. This enabled them to include situations in which Earth was very efficient at pulling carbon from the atmosphere when temperatures started rising.

They also included information about a variety of plants. Some plants can survive on a much lower ratio of atmospheric CO 2 than others. The study included plants that have a special photosynthetic process (known as crassulacean acid metabolism ), such as succulents and orchids. These plants can sustain themselves on relatively tiny amounts of CO 2 . The same is true of some marine plants , which can dissolve and access carbon in the ocean system.

Other experts were impressed by the findings.

"Haqq-Misra and Wolf have used a sophisticated 3D climate model to show that Earth's climate may remain hospitable to plant life significantly longer into the future than predicted" by simpler models, said Graham, who authored one of those earlier studies . "It's an advance over previous work and suggests that complex biospheres like that of Earth are more resilient to environmental change from stellar brightening than previously suggested."

Looking to the future

Andrew Rushby , an astrobiologist at Birkbeck University of London who was not involved in the research, told Live Science that the paper updated the concept of the lifetime of the biosphere. However, he cautioned that the results remained "broad estimates."

"It is not possible for us to predict or know the possible evolutionary adaptations that the photosynthetic biosphere may undergo in response to increasing solar output and lower [atmospheric CO 2 ], especially over billions of years," he said.

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In their paper, the authors wrote that "limits posed by thermal stress or starvation may only reflect our observations of the biosphere today rather than hard limits on how the biosphere may evolve." There is also no way of knowing how life might adapt to new circumstances.

Haqq-Misra said that he found the results comforting. "Earth's system is resilient, and we are part of something that could have a much, much longer future," he said.

The results could also help scientists figure out what the thresholds could be on other planets. "Part of the challenge is starting with these Earth-based models, and then generalizing the physics as much as possible to be able to simulate a wider range of atmospheres," he said.

How much do you know about our blue planet? Test your terran knowledge with our Earth quiz !