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And another year later, just for the record, this is what I believe has happened.
When you backup via iTunes, you can optionally set a password, which you will require if you want to restore that backup. If your devices has an encrypted profile on it, which is typically done on company devices to control the configuration, setting a password is not optional when you backup, so it prompts you for one.
But this password is not just for that backup, as you'd expect. It's for all further backups of that device. It will not prompt for a password for any later backups, it will just use that one. And you won't be able to restore any later backups unless you know it. Not knowing this is how it works, people don't realise they must carefully record the password in order for their backups to be any use at all.
It's really dumb. There's a thread about it on the Apple forums that's been running for years. People reply, proclaiming they have the answer - the password is your windows password, the password is your appleid, the password is your original appleid. But they're wrong, that just happens to be the password they chose.
If you're in this situation, try to think what password you might have set back when you did your *first* backup. It could have been years ago. If it was prompting you for a password, you probably made something up on the spot to get past that point, thinking you only need to remember it for a few minutes after resetting your phone or something. Could be 1234, could be your windows password, etc.
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