Cyberattacks are now the leading cause of IT downtime for the first time according to research by Databarracks.

Its latest data health check report, which surveyed 500 UK IT decision makers, nearly a quarter of responses said that cyberattacks were the biggest reason for downtime, and for the second year running were also the leading cause of data loss.

This year’s survey focused on themes of ransomware, cyber, backup, disaster Recovery, and business continuity. James Watts, managing director at Databarracks, said: “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.”

Since the annual data health check survey began in 2008, cyber has gone from one of the lowest causes of data loss and downtime to top in both categories, while other causes have not reduced. Watts said that IT teams are now operating in a much more difficult period with significantly more risk and threats to the continuity of their organisations.

The survey also found that security budgets increased again but disaster recovery testing decreased. Watts added: “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.

“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.”

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