How much will data loss set you back?

Companies and organizations of any size rely on data

The rise in the use of Internet technologies in business brings greater risks of data breaches and puts a stronger accent on data protection and security. Moreover, companies invest a lot of money yet still face hardware and software downtime, and data loss.

Digital data loss can cost you billions.

IT downtime can cost you your reputation and customer loyalty.

Are you ready to take that risk?

In terms of figures and financial loss, it’s easier to measure the cost of IT failure.

How much can it hurt a business?

Depending on the industry and business size, downtime costs vary and can have different effects, leading to either loss of the application service or loss of data due to a system outage following major financial and legal impact.

When Virgin Blue suffered a hardware failure, their check-in and booking system went down for 11 days, resulting in 50,000 upset customers. As a result, Navitaire, their reservation’s management company, compensated Virgin Blue for up to $20 million.

Consider the following statistic:

In one hour of downtime, an average company will suffer $110,000 (the Aberdeen Group).

E-commerce companies and telecommunication service providers cost of a single event can be $1 million, which is more than $11.000 per minute (Emerson Network Power and Ponemon Institute Study).

For 200 companies across North America and Europe, IT downtime costs $26.5 billion in revenue from suffering 14 hours of downtime per year (CA Technologies).

The average downtime in media sector is approximately $90.000 per hour to $6.48 million for large online brokerages.

The cost of data centre downtime for different industries is approximately $5,600 per minute (Emerson Network Power)

Average outage period is around 200 minutes, the average report incident was 90 minutes and average cost per incident is approximately $505,500 (Emerson Network Power).

Why does it cost that much?

Every county has different policy, the US and Germany are the most regulated countries, and victims of data breaches are required by law to report data loss. After a major data breach, many companies will pay for identity theft monitoring services as well. In less regulated environment, it may happen that a company isn’t required to notify anyone and cost of a data breach will result in losing a few customers.

Downtime cost also include costs of employee overtime expenses, emergency maintenance fees, repair costs, lost in business customers, and more. Furthermore, there are costs related to marketing and media campaigns launched to repair company’s damaged reputation.

What is the biggest loss? Customers.

How can you prevent it?

Data gathered from nearly 300 companies across nine countries by Symantec and Ponemon Institute highlight the most common causes of data loss: malicious attack, system glitch and human error.

Businesses should invest in technologies that reduce the possibility of data loss.

Data loss is inevitable, even the most reliable connections will experience downtime, and if your business can’t live without internet connection, having a resilient failover solution and disaster recovery plan is critical. Two things businesses should bear in mind: continuity and regularity – back up all your files regularly, monitor, and test continually.

To minimize the risks of human errors, train and encourage your staff members, and have a trusted data recovery provider – reliable data recovery provider understands the data security regulations and is capable of recovering data from all types of storage devices and all operating systems. A reliable provider prevents the loss of money and productivity.