Did you know that IT downtime costs companies an average of $5,600 per minute? For many businesses, especially those offering remote work opportunities, IT downtime is a growing problem. The “invisible” costs can be staggering. A breakdown of downtime costs:

1. Lost Revenue

Loss of revenue is the most common effect of downtime. Media, communications, government, banking, finance, manufacturing, healthcare, and utility industries are the most vulnerable.

2. Decreased Productivity

IT-related outages affect employees by leaving them unable to do their jobs and forces IT staff to jump into crisis management mode, postponing other critical tasks to quickly manage and resolve the incident. Employee morale suffers, not to mention the inevitable overtime that will be needed to ensure that deadlines are met.

3. Reputation Damage

Delays, unavailability, and missed deadlines can result in customers and prospects losing their confidence in your business. This will result in major losses, distrust, and a damaged reputation. Rebuilding your reputation is costly, not to mention that acquiring new customers will cost much more than retaining current clients.

4. Unsecure Data

Maintaining the security and safety of data is among the most important aspects of an IT system. Due to an increase in viruses and cybercrime, you need to ensure that your data is safe. Having dedicated tech support in place provides 24/7 support. This continuous monitoring ensures that in case of a breach, your information is secure. Your tech support team will put encryption in place to safeguard customer information and emails from cyber-attacks.

More About Ransomware Attacks

Research suggests that in addition to disabling systems, ransomware attacks reduce productivity, causing significant indirect costs and reputation damage. One of the most detrimental myths about ransomware attacks is “If your company does regular system backups, you don’t have to worry. Just restore the data from the backup.” While system backups are crucial, power outages, natural disasters, and mistakes by employees can destroy data just as quickly as a cyberattack.

Ransomware recovery isn’t painless. It also brings on many disruptive changes.

Restoring data and systems from backup is only the beginning of ransomware recovery. Organizations will need to strengthen systems to prevent future attacks, as well as make repairs to systems damaged by the ransomware. Recovering from a ransomware attack involves more than just restoring systems and data.

Did you know that roughly 50% of organizations pay the ransom?

Law enforcement and security experts advise against paying ransoms, as this encourages more attacks. However, ransomware brings businesses to a dead stop, causing panic. Often, management just wants to make the problem go away. While it may seem easier to pay the ransom, it’s important to keep in mind that ransom money is often used by cybercriminals to commit more crimes or fund other criminal enterprises.

Ransomware attacks can do irreparable damage to your company’s reputation.

Organizations that are victimized by ransomware attacks take a hit to their reputations. The stigma is so severe that a surprising number of organizations try to hide these breaches from the public and their stakeholders, resulting in a lack of transparency that erodes trust and is damaging to customer confidence. The focus should not be on the expenses incurred in IT support, but on its efficiency. In case of any cyber-attack, it will be very costly for your company to recover compared to the cost of having reliable tech support. Tech support is very necessary and a sound investment.   Schedule a free consultation today! Call (888) 880-2536 or reach us here.