Cybersecurity and the cost of human error

Cyber incidents are increasing rapidly. In 2024, the number of outages caused by cyber incidents was twice the average of the previous four years, according to Uptime Institute’s annual report on data center outages (see Annual outage analysis 2025). More operational technology (OT) vendors are experiencing significant increases in cyberattacks on their systems. Data center equipment vendor Honeywell analyzed hundreds of billions of system logs and 4,600 events in the first quarter of 2025, identifying 1,472 new ransomware extortion incidents — a 46% increase on the fourth quarter of 2024 (see Honeywell's 2025 Cyber Threat Report). Uptime Intelligence will discuss these implications in a future report.

Beyond the initial impact, cyberattacks can have lasting consequences for a company’s reputation and balance sheet. This report discusses eight recent incidents (see Table 2 below) in which cyberattacks on digital infrastructure caused a total of $8 billion in financial losses — a figure that could increase further due to ongoing legal claims.