What would one bad day cost you?
An outage, a ransomware attack, a failed update. Enter a few numbers and see what an hour, a day, and a week of downtime cost, with every assumption visible and adjustable.
Every hour of downtime costs about
An outage of : .
A floor, not a ceiling: lost customers, lost data, and ransom demands are not included.
What moves the number.
Where the money in an outage actually goes, and what shortens it.
Recovery time
The single biggest lever. Backups that have never been restored are a hope, not a plan. Test a full restore and time it.
Blast radius
How much stops when one thing fails. Segmented networks and separate backup credentials keep one incident from becoming a total one.
Detection
Hours between an attacker getting in and someone noticing are hours of damage. Managed detection and response exists to close that gap.
How is the cost calculated?
Two parts, per hour of outage. Revenue: your annual revenue divided by your operating hours, times the share of revenue that stops when systems are down. People: the number of people who cannot work, times their loaded hourly cost, times how much of their work stops. Add any one-time recovery costs, such as outside help, overtime, or penalties.
What is a loaded hourly cost?
Salary plus benefits, payroll taxes, and overhead, divided by hours worked. If you do not know it, 1.3 to 1.5 times the average hourly wage is a common rule of thumb.
What does this leave out?
Harder-to-price costs: customers who leave, reputational damage, data that cannot be recovered, regulatory penalties, and the cost of a ransom. Treat the result as a floor.
What should I do with the number?
Compare it with what better backup and recovery would cost. That is the conversation to have with your board, your insurer, or your IT provider, and the Continuity and Recovery Assessment shows where the gaps are.