Splunk’s new downtime report reveals that global companies lose about $600 billion each year due to outages, cyber incidents, and digital interruptions.
The costs associated with IT downtime are rising rapidly. According to a new research report, the economic loss for the world’s 2,000 largest companies has increased by 50 percent over the past two years and now totals nearly SEK 6 trillion.
The report, The Hidden Costs of Downtime, was produced by Cisco-owned Splunk in collaboration with Oxford Economics. It estimates the frequency and financial impact of IT outages based on responses from decision-makers at the 2,000 largest companies worldwide, as listed in the Forbes Global 2000 index.
The findings highlight several worrying trends and identify major challenges businesses face when managing disruptions—whether caused by cyberattacks, human error, or failures in underlying systems.
The monetary toll of outages is staggering. On average, an IT outage costs nearly SEK 150,000 per minute. Altogether, Global 2000 companies lose around $600 billion annually—equivalent to nearly SEK 6 trillion at current exchange rates, according to the report’s calculations. These costs include direct revenue losses, which average $95 million per company, as well as damage to brand reputation and expenses for remediation and restoration.
A major, high-profile outage typically causes an average negative impact of 3.4 percent on the affected company’s share price.
“We see news about outages at Swedish companies and public services almost daily. In an increasingly digitalized society, the consequences are more severe and attract greater attention. Prolonged and recurring disruptions not only lead to lost revenue but, above all, to lost trust. This is a reality every company must face, and the report shows that business is becoming increasingly vulnerable,” said Anders Stinger, Nordics leader at Splunk.
Nearly half of companies—47 percent—report that customers often or very often are the first to detect an ongoing outage rather than the organization itself, and 81 percent of companies have lost customers because of these problems. The cost of ransomware attacks is another large and rapidly growing financial burden, with a substantial portion of losses ending up in the hands of cybercriminals. Ransom payments in 2025 were three times higher than in 2024.
These severe consequences risk fostering a culture of silence. Seventy-one percent of companies feel that the cost of disclosing a data breach is very high or unreasonably high. Fines for violations of laws and regulations averaged $51 million.
The shortage of skilled personnel to handle outages is acute, driving increased investment in AI-augmented tools for operations. The median investment in AI-based tools for secure operations among the 2,000 companies was $24.5 million. Companies that have advanced in deploying such tools were less likely to experience data breaches and were almost three times more likely to have avoided customer losses due to downtime.
Splunk is a leading data platform focused on collecting, indexing, and analyzing machine-generated data in real time to help organizations monitor their digital infrastructure effectively. The company was acquired by Cisco in 2024.