In 2023 cyber-attacks are, for the first time, the leading cause of IT downtime — when a organisation’s IT systems are unavailable — in the Databarracks Data Health Check, accounting for nearly a quarter of responses.

For the second year running, cyber-attacks were also the leading cause of data loss.

The findings come from the annual Data Health Check survey of 500 UK IT decision-makers. This year’s survey focused on themes of ransomware, cyber, backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity.

As well as the worrying stats about IT downtime, the report found that while 52 of organisations have actively tested their disaster recovery plan, this is actually less than in 2022 (54%).

Furthermore, the data revealed that 63% of businesses would survive less than one day without IT systems. A huge jump when you consider that this figure was just 46% in 2017.

The report also delved into some ransomware preparedness stats, stating that organisations reported an increase in the number of attacks compared to 2022, but only a quarter are confident in their team’s ability to respond to a ransomware event.

James Watts, managing director of Databarracks, commented:  “It’s no surprise that cyber is now the top cause of downtime for businesses. Organisations are struggling to keep up with a rapidly evolving threat.

“In previous years, the primary cause of downtime has been hardware failure. Cyber has been growing steadily, but since 2021 it has drastically increased as a cause of downtime.

“We have been conducting the Data Health Check survey since 2008. Cyber has gone from one of the lowest causes of data loss and downtime to top in both categories. The other causes have not reduced. IT teams are now operating in a much more difficult period with significantly more risk and threats to the continuity of their organisations.

“Downtime and data loss are the two impacts we tend to think about most in IT resilience. Both translate to a loss of revenue for the organisation.

“There has also been a change in attitude over the last two years regarding concerns in a disaster situation. Commercial considerations like loss of revenue and loss of sales opportunities are up, reputational concerns are down.

“Security budgets increased again but Disaster Recovery Testing decreased. Cyber risk is like an arms race. As the threat grows, we need to increase our prevention, detection, response, and recovery measures just to stand still.

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“Testing and exercising are vital to prepare teams and improve your response capability. They are also invaluable for identifying gaps in your process and highlighting areas for improvement. This is the best way to make sure you are in your strongest recovery position should an attack or an incident occur. We have seen that to be the case year after year.”

The report concluded that while there’s plenty to be gloomy about in the cyber-landscape, there has been some ‘major wins this year’. Namely, compared to previous Data Health Check reports, more organisations have cyber insurance, cybersecurity training is more prevalent and more are being proactive in their defence against cyber-threats.

Looking ahead, the report claims that the rate of growth in cyber-attacks is unlikely to slow, advising that preparedness is the best defence against this.