As we head into 2022, business owners are asking “what is the cost of risking my data”. What factors influence loss; it’s a natural disaster flooding their office, a cybercriminal gaining access to their data, or their own employee accidentally deleting important files, the stress of data loss is high. All of these situations on their own pose risk to a business’s future, but what about the other less talked about “true” costs of data loss?
Downtime
Network outages, server failures and ransomware can all cause significant periods of downtime. Obviously, the longer your business is offline, the more money and productivity you can lose. In a 2016 study by the Ponemon Institute, the minimum cost of unplanned downtime for any size company was $926 per minute. With that staggering number in mind, how long could your organization afford to be “offline”?
Output Loss
As stated above, downtime and data loss cause stoppages in workflow. Your users and employees will struggle to complete essential work activities without access to their data and applications.
Halted Revenue
A large consequence of being offline for an indeterminate amount of time can be the disruption of your revenue process. If you are unable to access your customer transactions and orders, you could be left with delayed or even lost profits. Making things worse, if you are the target of a ransomware attack, your entire system could be encrypted and make accessing your systems impossible.
Non-Compliance
If your business suffers data loss and is in an industry that is heavily regulated, you could find yourself at risk of heavy fines. Organizations in finance and healthcare need to be extra vigilant when it comes to staying compliant to HIPAA and GDPR. Fines from non-compliance can come from anything such as a lost or stolen medical device with sensitive information, or a finance company experiencing a provider outage that leads to GDPR violations. Depending on the severity of non-compliance, a HIPAA violation fine can range anywhere from $100 to $50,000 per record.
Production Stoppages
Data loss and unplanned downtime can even shut down the production process for some businesses, resulting in product shortages for customers. For an organization in an industry like manufacturing, that could lead to losses up to $260,000/hour.
Tarnished Reputation
However your data loss occurs, a large consequence is a damaged reputation and loss of trust from your customers and investors. In a survey done by Cybereason, 53% of companies reported that their brand had been tarnished after their data had been compromised from ransomware and 29% were forced to remove jobs.
What Can You Do?
Even in the face of the dangers of data loss, there are steps you can take to reduce your risk. Having a well-designed business continuity plan and tested backups are the first step. Our expert engineers have designed countless continuity plans to backup and protect our customers’ data. We would love the opportunity to meet with you and help your organization reduce your business risk. To learn on how we can help more look at our Managed Services pages.
