According to a new analysis by North Star Support Group (NSSG), the cost of business interruption due to a broad array of threats continues to rise. Today’s organisations can no longer consider themselves relatively immune from disruptive events taking place half a world away, especially given the hyperconnectivity of digital business-related services and global supply chains.
Most of the threats are known and the wide range of mitigation measures are also known, but businesses can still suffer from operational downtime, revenue loss, reputational impact, data loss as well as financial penalties from unexpected disruptions and lack of planning.
Downtime can be caused by a number of factors, including human error, hardware failure, faulty software, network overload or shutdowns, power outages, severe weather events, as well as cyberattacks.
The repercussions, however, can be severe on an organisation’s revenue, productivity, brand reputation, and customer loyalty. According to Nordlayer, formerly NordVPN Teams, a company impacted by a cyberattack can experience around 466 hours of downtime, costing on average up to USD 9,000 per minute for a large-scale firm.
Small businesses can lose, on average, $430 per minute. For businesses that see a high rate of cyber-related attacks, such as finance, government, media, retail, transportation, and IT, this cost can significantly rise to USD 83,000 per minute or $5 million per hour. This translates to annual losses of around $2.3 billion in these sectors. Power issues are the most common causes of outages and network-related problems are the single most common reason for IT service outages.
At the more nefarious end of the spectrum are cyberattacks, caused by brute-force tactics and savvy social engineering techniques by hostile external actors. Cyber and Social Engineering are some of the several disruptors to business continuity that will be presented in November’s Monthly Pulse. We will also look at New Technologies and Governance, Climate Change and Severe Weather Events, and Insider Threats and Sabotage, as some of the key business continuity disruptors, and why Business Continuity will remain at the forefront of Risk Management concerns for 2025.
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