Ransomware and Downtime: What’s Your Recovery Really Worth?
Real-World Lessons in Downtime Costs
Colonial Pipeline Ransomware Attack (May 2021)
On May 7, 2021, Colonial Pipeline, a major fuel distributor on the East Coast, suffered a ransomware attack by the DarkSide group.
The company paid a $4.4 million ransom to resume operations. The attack led to fuel shortages and panic buying across the southeastern United States.
Scripps Health Ransomware Attack (May 2021)
In May 2021, Scripps Health, a San Diego-based healthcare provider, was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted patient care and operations.
The attack forced the organization to revert to paper records for nearly a month, resulting in over $100 million in losses. Scripps Health later agreed
to pay $3.57 million to settle a lawsuit from victims of the data breach.
Why Time Really Is Money
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): The maximum acceptable amount of time that your business can be offline.
- Lost Revenue: Sales halt, customers churn, and service-level agreements (SLAs) are broken.
- Reputation Erosion: Public perception suffers when your business isn’t prepared for disruptions.
- Operational Chaos: Staff often lack a clear fallback plan when systems are down.
The Formula
Downtime Cost = (Revenue Loss + Productivity Loss + Recovery Cost + Fines + Legal Exposure)
Even small businesses can face losses in the tens of thousands per day when operations are disrupted. Continuity planning isn’t just an IT expense —
it’s a business survival expense.
Coming Up Next
In Post 3, we’ll discuss “Test or Guess: Why Continuity Plans Fail When You Need Them Most” and how to validate that your plan works
before a real incident occurs.