Acronis Cyber Protect v17 Q3 2026: Entra ID Configuration Backup, Nutanix and Warranty Limits

Acronis's announcement is written as marketing. Phrases like "stronger cyber resilience" and "simplified operations" describe benefits the company expects, not results anyone has measured. The more useful detail is in Acronis's own release notes, especially the Cyber Protect Cloud 26.09 notes. They spell out conditions and limits the blog leaves out.

Entra ID backup now covers tenant configuration​

Acronis says Entra ID Backup now backs up and restores five more kinds of settings:

• User Settings
• Group Settings
• Role Settings
• Custom Domains
• Organization settings

The goal is to help organizations restore more of their identity setup after accidental deletion, misconfiguration or an identity-based attack.

The Cyber Protect Cloud 26.09 release notes call this "Microsoft Entra ID backup, phase 2." They list the same five objects as additions to what the previous release protected. They also add two details the blog omits:

• Object properties are shown with readable labels.
• You can search for a BitLocker key object by device ID.

What phase 1 included. Entra ID support first appeared in the Cyber Protect Cloud 26.06 release notes. That release let partners protect Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) organizations, enabling backup, comparison, and granular recovery of identity and access management data. It supported comparing Entra ID backup data with live data or another backup to detect configuration drift and recovering data at any level: organization, objects, records, or individual properties. Acronis's Q2 blog said the feature could help restore users, groups, role assignments, policies, group memberships and MFA settings.

Why it matters. Microsoft's own recovery options for Entra ID mostly cover recently deleted objects. If a tenant-wide setting is changed by mistake or by an attacker, the old value is often just gone. Phase 2 reaches into tenant-wide settings rather than just users and groups, which is where those changes do the most damage.

Licensing. According to the 26.09 notes, the feature is available under:

• Solution-based licensing: Backup and Disaster Recovery or Ultimate Protection
• Service-based licensing: Standard Protection, under Microsoft 365 seats

Those terms come from the Cloud release notes. On-premises customers should not assume they apply identically.

In short: phase 2 extends Entra ID backup from identity objects to tenant-wide configuration. It is the most Microsoft-relevant item in the release.

Backup changes: new files, password rotation and VMs​

New files in selected folders​

The blog says Cyber Protect can now automatically back up new files added to selected folders. The 26.09 notes explain the problem it fixes. Before, if you selected a folder and then excluded some files or subfolders, the backup covered only the items that were selected at that moment. Anything added to the folder later was not backed up.

Partners can now choose, folder by folder, whether files created after the selection are included. If you have file-level plans with exclusions, review them. They may have been leaving out newer files without any warning.

Archive password rotation for VM backups​

The Q2 release added archive password rotation for agent-based backups. The on-premises Cyber Protect 17 release notes say that feature covers:

• Physical servers, workstations and agent-based VMs
• The v12 (tibx) backup format only

The Q3 blog says rotation now extends to "virtual machine backups." The 26.09 Cloud notes are more specific: partners can change the encryption password for archives that contain agentless virtual machines.

There is one constraint to plan around. Per the Cloud notes, you can change the password again only after every protected machine has at least two successful backups using the new password. If you rotate twice in a hurry after a suspected compromise, the second change will have to wait.

Anti-ransomware warranty: read the conditions​

The blog only says that qualifying recovery points are backed by a financial guarantee. The 26.09 Cloud notes give the details:

• Payout: if a covered recovery point cannot be recovered, the warranty covers reimbursement of up to $1 million.
• Scope: endpoints only, and disk, volume and file archives only.
• Conditions: every one of the following must be true:
  1. The archive is stored in Acronis-hosted cloud storage.
  2. Two-factor authentication is enabled.
  3. Immutable storage in Compliance mode is enabled.
  4. The backup is validated by checksum, screenshot validation or heartbeat.
• Setup: none. It is on by default for anyone who meets the conditions.

If your backups go to a local NAS, or you haven't turned on immutability, the warranty doesn't cover you. Even if you never file a claim, the list is a reasonable minimum standard for backup hygiene.

Nutanix and Proxmox support​

The blog lists support for Nutanix 7.3–7.5 and Proxmox 9.1–9.2.

Nutanix. The 26.09 Cloud notes confirm agentless backup and recovery for VMs on Nutanix AOS 7.3 and 7.5. The bigger change is underneath: the agentless solution now uses Nutanix's v4 API. Nutanix is deprecating the older v2 and v3 APIs by the end of 2026, so this move matters for anyone planning to stay on Nutanix. The notes also add:

• Integration with Prism Central as well as Prism Element, so protection can be managed across multiple AHV clusters
• Backup and recovery of Prism Central properties such as VM categories

Proxmox. Agentless Proxmox VE backup has been part of v17 from the start. The 9.1–9.2 range comes only from the blog. The release notes reviewed here don't confirm it, so check Acronis's compatibility list before upgrading your Proxmox hosts.

Security awareness training​

The headline feature for staff is Security Awareness Training. Acronis says it includes:

• Learning content
• Phishing and deepfake simulations
• Reporting, including completion tracking

The announcement gives no pricing, tier details, language list or evidence that it works. Training tools like this are a crowded market, and their value depends on whether the simulations resemble real attacks. The pitch here is having training in the same console as backup and endpoint security, not a new kind of training.

Patch-status reporting per workload​

Cyber Protect now shows which patches have and have not been installed on each workload. This is reporting only. The announcement does not say it deploys patches or fixes failed installs. It helps you see gaps, but you still need a patch-management process to close them.

Not available yet​

Acronis labels both of these as coming in a future release. No dates were given.

• Cyber Frame Cloud: a cloud infrastructure service combining virtual machines, storage, networking and built-in protection. The 26.09 notes already describe related Cyber Frame work, including bring-your-own-license Windows Server images and Windows Server Datacenter images in the catalog.
• Orphaned archive management for Microsoft 365: a way to find backup archives left behind after Microsoft 365 users are deleted. The announcement says it will help identify those archives. It does not say it will delete them automatically.

What to check before relying on any of this​

1. Your deployment type. The Cloud 26.09 notes and the on-premises Cyber Protect 17 notes describe different feature sets. The latest on-premises build listed is 17.1.43095, dated September 9, 2026. Don't assume a Cloud feature is in your on-premises build.
2. Your licence tier. Most backup items in the 26.09 notes require Backup and Disaster Recovery, Ultimate Protection or Standard Protection.
3. Your backup format. Agent-based password rotation is tibx-only.
4. Warranty conditions. Before you count on the warranty, confirm 2FA, Compliance-mode immutability and validation are actually turned on.
5. Hypervisor versions. Check them against Acronis's compatibility documentation, especially for Proxmox.

Bottom line: none of these features is unusual on its own. The phase 2 Entra ID work stands out most, along with the move to Nutanix's v4 API before the old APIs are retired. For Acronis shops in Microsoft 365 environments, the release is worth a look. Read the release notes before you believe the blog.