The presentation discussed MongoDB's approach to modern data backup and recovery from on-premises to the public cloud. It introduced WiredTiger checkpoints that take checkpoints of data and move them to long-term storage, eliminating the need for initial syncs and reducing infrastructure requirements. It also discussed Atlas' multi-AZ disaster recovery, point-in-time data recovery with queryable backups, and continuous backup regions using cloud provider snapshots to satisfy data sovereignty at a lower cost. Future improvements may allow point-in-time restores with customizable windows and building new clusters from backups.