When most executives think about cyber risks, they picture data theft, ransomware demands, or regulatory fines. But there’s another consequence that often hurts the most – downtime. According to industry studies, unplanned downtime can cost businesses anywhere from $12,000 to $23,000 per minute, depending on the sector and organization size. And unlike system outages caused by technical failures, downtime triggered by a cyber attack is often longer, harder to recover from, and more damaging to trust.
Cyber threats don’t keep office hours. If your monitoring team signs off at 5 p.m., attackers gain the advantage of time. By the time someone notices an incident the next morning, the damage may already be done. The real question isn’t whether you can afford 24/7 monitoring – it’s whether you can afford the true cost of downtime without it.
What Cyber Downtime Really Means
Downtime isn’t just a frozen screen or an offline server. In the context of a cyber attack, it ripples through every corner of the business:
- Lost productivity: Employees sit idle while systems are unavailable.
- Customer impact: Orders can’t be processed, payments fail, services are delayed.
- Compliance setbacks: In regulated industries, downtime may mean failure to meet reporting or service obligations.
- Longer recovery cycles: Unlike a hardware issue, a cyber incident requires forensic investigation, containment, and often full rebuilds.
In short, cyber downtime is not only longer but also more complex. While a hardware reboot may take an hour, recovering from a ransomware incident can take days or even weeks.
The Financial Impact of Downtime
The monetary cost of downtime quickly adds up across multiple categories:
- Direct revenue loss – Every minute customers can’t transact means money left on the table.
- Operational costs – Emergency IT efforts, overtime, vendor involvement, and temporary solutions.
- Regulatory fines – Non-compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, or other frameworks due to disruption.
- Reputational damage – Customers lose trust, partners lose patience, and stock prices can take a hit.
Example: A mid-sized e-commerce retailer averaging €125,000 in daily sales faces a cyber attack that takes systems down for 4 hours. That’s €20,000 in lost revenue, plus an estimated €50,000 in remediation, overtime, and customer compensation. The total: €70,000 for one short incident.
Multiply that by days of downtime, and the picture becomes unsustainable.
As we explored in our post Budgeting for 2026: Why Cybersecurity Needs to Be on Your Agenda, aligning security investments with business goals early prevents costly surprises.
Why 9-5 Monitoring Isn’t Enough
Many companies rely on business-hours monitoring, assuming that’s sufficient. But attackers deliberately strike at night, on weekends, or during holidays when response times lag.
- Threat dwell time matters: Every hour a breach goes undetected gives attackers more opportunity to move laterally, exfiltrate data, or deploy ransomware.
- Case comparison: A malware infection discovered within 1 hour may require quick isolation and patching. The same infection discovered 12 hours later could mean multiple compromised systems, stolen data, and a week of downtime.
Simply put: reacting late turns manageable incidents into disasters.
The ROI of 24/7 Threat Monitoring
Investing in continuous monitoring isn’t just about avoiding losses – it’s about protecting revenue, reputation, and resilience.
- Cost comparison: The price of a single day of downtime often exceeds the annual cost of a managed 24/7 monitoring service.
- Speed of response: Real-time detection and rapid containment drastically reduce downtime.
- Scalability: Continuous monitoring grows with your business, covering new systems and users.
- Predictable budgeting: Instead of unpredictable crisis spending, organizations shift costs to planned operational expenses.
At AMATAS, our MXDR (Managed Extended Detection and Response) service delivers round-the-clock visibility and response through our CREST-accredited SOC center, ensuring threats are stopped before they spiral into costly outages. To understand what CREST accreditation entails and why it matters, read What a CREST-Accredited SOC Really Means for Your Security.
Making the Business Case to Leadership
To gain budget approval, frame 24/7 monitoring in terms that resonate with leadership:
- Downtime is expensive: One incident may cost more than years of monitoring service.
- Benchmarks matter: Leading organizations allocate a significant portion of their cybersecurity budgets to monitoring because prevention is cheaper than recovery.
- Insurance vs. monitoring: Insurance pays for damages after the fact; monitoring prevents or minimizes those damages in the first place.
Conclusion: Downtime Costs More Than Protection
Downtime is more than an inconvenience; it’s a direct hit to revenue, compliance, and customer trust. In today’s cyber landscape, relying on limited monitoring hours is a gamble that can cost far more than the solution itself.
Investing in 24/7 threat monitoring is ultimately about investing in business continuity. With AMATAS’s MXDR service, you gain the peace of mind that your defenses are active every hour of every day, keeping downtime – and its true cost – off your balance sheet.
Ready to calculate what downtime could cost your business? Let’s talk.
